Mexican Orthodoxy Crosses the Border
Mexican religious order revives East LA parish
(Sept./Oct. 2000)

BY MARÍA ELENA KENNEDY

MOST THOUGHTFUL CATHOLICS agree that there is something terribly amiss among Catholics in the United States. The woes are many; major religious orders struggle to attract vocations, if they get any at all; fewer and fewer Catholics in the United States believe in the Real Presence; few young people really know their faith; many Catholics attend Mass only twice a year, once at Christmas and then at Easter. Yet in the midst of this decline, there is a remarkable trend that has gone largely unnoticed by English-speaking Catholics.

In various parishes throughout the United States, Latino Catholics are quietly practicing their faith, sometimes in opposition to their local bishop, while their American counterparts remain indifferent to their faith.

Nuestra Señora de La Soledad Catholic Church is such a parish. For 69 years, the parish had been staffed by the Claretians who introduced the largely conservative parishioners to various liberal political issues. The now deceased Father Luis Olivares rallied his parishioners into various causes which ranged from liberation theology to marching with Cesar Chavez.

Earlier this year, the Claretians were forced to hand over the parish to a new order of priests from Mexico because the Claretians reluctantly admitted they no longer had enough priests to staff the parish. In spite of grim predictions that the parish would not be served well by the new, albeit conservative, order, the opposite seems to be occurring at Nuestra Señora de la Soledad.

The new order, los Misioneros Servidores de la Palabra (the Missionary Servants of the Word), was founded on the premise that all of the faithful must serve as missionaries of the Word, regardless of their state in life. To that end, the Misioneros have set up a remarkable system in Mexico that is drawing young people by the tens of thousands to its center in Mexico City to learn how to infuse the culture with the Catholic faith. This past Easter Sunday, the Misioneros had a youth rally that drew 100,000 young people from all over Mexico. These young people endured a night under the clouds and rain, in order to be in the stadium on Easter Sunday.

In East Los Angeles, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is staffed by two priests, Father Genero Guzman, M.S.P. and Father Gilberto Torres, M.S.P. Father Torres serves as the pastor of the church. In addition to the two priests, three sisters live in a nearby convent. The sisters wear a modified habit which includes a veil. After the 1917 Mexican Constitution was enacted, it was forbidden to wear clerical or religious garments in Mexico. This ban was relaxed in the early ‘90’s and some Mexican religious have opted to take a cautious course when it come to habits. Ever mindful of their order's mission, the sisters have begun a catechetical program in order to teach the faith to the parishioners. On Saturday mornings, the sisters, often accompanied by parishioners, fan across the nearby neighborhoods inviting people to come to the catechetical program they have set up in the parish. The parishioners are responding enthusiastically. The order also has a small group of sisters in Boston who also are actively evangelizing among the people.

St. Isidore’s closed
St. Isidore's Church in Los Alamitos, has long been another stronghold of traditional Latino Catholicism. The parish harbored priests that were fleeing Mexico when the Mexican government had unleashed its vicious persecution of the Catholic Church in the early part of this century. The late Paulita Cano recounted in an August, 1999 interview with this writer how a little house near St. Isidore's was used to house priests who came to the United States because they would have been killed in Mexico for simply being Catholic priests. Cano herself cared for a paralyzed priest from Mexico for 29 years. In May of 1999 the Diocese of Orange decided to close St. Isidore's Catholic Church citing concerns about the vulnerability of the church building during an earthquake. In spite of the fact that parishioners offered to raise the money to reinforce the building, the diocese remained indifferent to their pleas. Paul Ghafari-Saravi, a local civil engineer even offered to do the $40,000 retrofitting job for free. The diocese was not interested.

The diocese also would not accept offers from parishioners to bring in priests from Mexico to staff the church. The diocese had claimed the lack of Spanish-speaking priests was another reason they were going to close St. Isidore's. To date, in spite of the fact that the parishioners continue to beg the diocese to re-open the little church that their ancestors built among the fields, the diocese has remained adamant that parishioners go elsewhere. The last liturgy held at St. Isidore's was in September of 1999. It was the requiem Mass for Paulita Cano, who died at age 101.

At one point when parishioners were meeting with diocesan officials requesting that their church be reopened, the diocese offered the parishioners counseling instead. Last year then-Mayor Marilyn Poe wrote to Bishop Tod Brown asking that the diocese re-open the church. It is unclear whether or not Bishop Brown even responded to the letter as there is no record of a letter from the bishop according to one city hall staffer.

No one knows what will happen to St. Isidore. The parishioners are still hoping that the diocese hears their plea and re-opens their little church. The parish that the diocese has directed them to, St. Hedwig's which is also in Los Alamitos, has no appeal for these traditional Catholic Latinos. St. Hedwig is thoroughly modernist in its liturgy and sterile in its architecture.

Because Latinos are the fastest growing population in the Catholic Church in America, the direction they take in matters of faith will affect all Catholics in the United States in the future. Bishops and their dioceses would do well to understand the faith and needs of Latino Catholics.

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