STATEMENT ON THE BEATIFICATION OF

BLESSED POPE JOHN PAUL II

Most Reverend José H. Gomez

Archbishop of Los Angeles

I am overjoyed that the Church is declaring Pope John Paul II to be “blessed.” His beatification will be a beautiful grace for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for California, and for all the nations of the Americas and the rest of the world. I feel connected to Blessed John Paul by bonds of filial affection and deep ties of grace. I was a new priest, ordained just three months, when he was named Pope on October 22, 1978. He called me to be a bishop in 2001 and, not long before his death in 2005, he called me to be an archbishop. I knew him as a wise and holy spiritual father. And I feel the hand of Providence at work in his being beatified as I begin my ministry here in Los Angeles. Blessed John Paul’s teaching and personal witness continue to inspire my pastoral ministry. He was a great apostle, a witness to the resurrection for our time. He taught us that Jesus Christ is the answer to every human question. In the encounter with Christ, he told us, we discover God’s merciful face and find the true meaning of our lives. He told us that in Christ we are all called to be holy, to live our lives for God’s glory and for the love and service our neighbors. And he

called us to join him in building a civilization of love and a culture of life. These were not original ideas. They are the essence of the Gospel. Blessed John Paul’s gift was to make the Christian ideal seem new again. He lived the Gospel with a passion and intelligence that was compelling and attractive. He made the Catholic way of life look so beautiful, so alive. He inspired many to want to follow him, to share the joy of his friendship with Jesus Christ, to dedicate themselves to what he called the “high standard of ordinary Christian living.”

Blessed John Paul visited nearly every region of the United States, from Alaska to Miami and from Boston to Los Angeles. Millions of Americans heard him speak. He honored the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with a pastoral visit on Sept. 15–16, 1987. He was welcomed by then-Archbishop Roger Mahony and retired Cardinal Timothy Manning. He met with cultural leaders and leaders of other religions. He visited with Catholic school children. He celebrated Mass at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, at Dodger Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He gathered all the bishops of the United States here to meet and to pray together. He used his visit to Los Angeles to make a special act of entrusting our nation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. His message to our local Church was bold: We must remember the deep Christian and immigrant roots of our region and nation. He reminded us: before the American Revolution, Blessed Junípero Serra and the Franciscans were preaching the Gospel and celebrating the Eucharist in this land. He told us that our local Church is an icon of what Christ intends his Catholic Church to be — one family of God drawn from every nation, race and culture. He drew this beautiful portrait of our Church: “Today in the Church in Los Angeles: Christ is Anglo and Hispanic. Christ is Chinese and Black. Christ is Vietnamese

and Irish. Christ is Korean and Italian. Christ is Japanese and Filipino. Christ is Native American, Croatian, Samoan, and many other ethnic groups. “In this local Church, the one risen Christ, the one Lord and Savior, is living in each person who has accepted the Word of God and been washed clean in the saving waters of baptism. And the Church, with all her different members, remains the one Body of Christ, professing the same faith, united in hope and in love.” Blessed John Paul sowed the seeds for a new springtime of holiness and Christian mission. Those seeds are already bearing fruit in the lives of millions of Catholics and others. I pray that his beatification will lead many more to be inspired by his life and teachings — in Los Angeles, and throughout our continent and world.

Every 1st Monday of October all the priests of the Archdiocese have a meeting together at the cathedral to discuss various issues and concerns. This year was special as it was the first year to meet with Archbishop Jose Gomez in charge. We enjoyed the address which is summarized below about the nature and challenges of the priesthood in today's world:

The Priest in the XXI Century

Meeting with the Priests of the Archdiocese

Presentation by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza

Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy

My Dear Priests:

Dorothy Thompson, a U.S. writer, several decades ago published an article in a magazine the results of a careful investigationof the ill-famed Dachau concentration camp. One of the Key questions directed at the survivors was the following: “Amongst the survivors of the living hell that was Dachau who has maintained an inner peace the longest?” The answer was nearly unanimous and almost always the same: “the catholic priests”. Yes, the catholic priests! They have maintained the inner peace in the midst of so much insanity, because they were aware of their Vocation. They carried within them a scale of values. Their commitment to an ideal was total. They were aware of their specific mission and clearly knew the profound reasons for holding on to it. In the midst of their hell on earth, they gave their testimony: that of Jesus Christ! We live in an unstable world. There is instability in the family, in the world of employment, in the various social and professional associations, in our schools and in many of our institutions. Nevertheless, the priest must be in his very makeup a model of stability and maturity, of a total commitment to his apostolate.

The Secularization, the Gnosticism, the atheism of our age, in so many ways relentlessly reduces with greater effect each day, the sacred in our lives, drying up the life blood of the Christian message. People today who focus on technology and the self-help sciences, who live and thrive on pure appearances, live in extreme spiritual poverty. They are victims of a grave existential anxiety, resulting in an inability to resolve the deep problems of the spiritual life both within the family and society. In this context the life and the ministry of the priest acquire a decisive importance and yet a sense of urgency. Perhaps I can say it better this way: the more marginalized the more important he becomes, the more he is relegated to the heap of history the more he must be found in the center of our world today.

The priest must understand the need to be in the midst of his people, as one who lives according to a logic that speaks a language different from others (“do not conform yourselves to the mind of this world” Romans 12:12). He is not like “the others”. What people expect from a priest is precisely this, that he not be like “the others.” The priest must be small and big at the same time, noble as a king in spirit, yet sincere and innocent as a field worker. He must be a hero who has conquered himself first, always in control of his desires, a servant of the small and the weak; who will not humiliate himself with the powerful but is willing to bow to the poor and the meek, a disciple of his Lord and the head of his flock.

No gift is more precious to a community than to have a priest according to the heart of Christ.