The Archbishop of Los Angeles, José H. Gomez, and the late Pope Francis took their positions two years apart.
The two were Latinos pioneers – Gomez became the first Mexican chief of the largest American archdiocese in 2011, and Francis became the first pontiff in the Americas in 2013.
The two inherited damage left by their predecessors – Gomez needed to straighten his SEE after decades of sexual abuse scandals under Cardinal Roger Mahony, and Francis had to understand how to reign in the shadow of Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in almost 600 years.
Everyone has come from religious movements for a long time controversial in the Catholic world – the progressive Jesuits of Francis, the conservative opus for Gomez. They both obtained applause for having done the hard work of the Ministry of Cities in Blue Colles – Buenos Aires for Francis, San Antonio for Gomez. This is why the Catholics of the world warmly welcomed them – and crowned them with waiting to make history.
After his death the day after Easter at the age of 88, Francis was greeted for pushing the Catholics and others to abandon selfishness and materialism in favor of a nicer and more tolerant world focused on the whole on the marginalized.
The man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio supervised a church which went from 1.3 billion Catholics when he started at 1.4 billion today, according to the Vatican figures. His reign was not perfect, and his liberal belief annoyed enough conservative Catholics for a counter-movement to be emerged in the United States, with its own conferences, private schools and publications. History will nevertheless remember Francis as a pope of consequence, who met the proverbial moment in a way that would make Saint-Pierre prier.
In a statement after François’ death, Archbishop Gomez prayed for Catholics to remember the pope’s call “to urgent tasks that are still not finished”, like standing with the oppressed of society, evangelizing and creating a peaceful world.
It’s a good feeling, and I hope Gomez really takes it to heart.
In an area that produced Catholic church men influenced by the way Dodgers have produced recruits of the year, Gomez has equipped the living equivalent with a hair shirt: a mode of piety that does not serve anyone other than the carrier.
Los Angeles changed powerfully since Gomez started here 14 years ago. The poor were poorer and the rich withdrew in their homes protected by the camera. Corruption has infected the political body, leaving a chasm in the desperate local leadership for someone to fill. Over the past five years, Angelenos has resisted Covid, the Town Hall audio leaks scandal, Eaton palisades and fires, and now the spectrum of devastating prices and raids of a world city.
However, Gomez largely urged his herd to lead a contemplative life in the name of Jesus, Mary and the Saints, who pure the witness practiced not only by Francis but by many in the archdiocese himself.
A photograph of the auxiliary bishop David G. O’Connell is located near the entrance to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame des Anges in 2023. O’Connell was shot down to his home in Hacienda Heights.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
It was there that Father Luis Olivares challenged the Church and representatives of the government to make the Placita Church a sanctuary for the refugees of Central America in the 1980s. Where Father Gregory Boyle created Homeboy Industries to bring dignity and meaning to the life of former members of Gangs. Since the 1980s, Father John Moretta has advised parishioners at the Resurrection church in Boyle Heights on the troubles that afflict their neighborhood.
Where one of the own auxiliary bishops of Gomez, the late David O’Connell, fought environmental racism in the name of black parishioners in southern Los Angeles, was held with workers from the striking hotel and prayed with parishioners outside the clinics of planned parenting. Where the members of the Catholic worker serve free meals on Skid Row.
When I think of these examples and many others, I think of Pope Francis. I don’t think about Gomez – and it’s a shame.
There was a time when the Archbishop seemed to work in this kingdom of the supervisors. In 2013, he published a book entitled “Immigration and the Next America” which pleaded for a complete reform of immigration and the value of all the people who enter this country. Not more recently than 2020, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame des Angels sounded in memory of George Floyd, while Gomez used his regular letter to Angelenos to denounce racism as “a blasphemy against God” and urged everyone to “eliminate the racial injustice which still infects too many areas of American society”.
But as it became more progressive, Gomez retired to his conservatism.
During his three years as the first Latin chief of the American conference of Catholic bishops, Gomez continued the nonsense of the cultural war instead of real problems. When Joe Biden, a liberal and permanent Catholic, was inaugurated in the presidency, the archbishop wrote a letter accusing him of having planned to “advance moral ailments” such as gay marriage, abortion rights and contraception funded by the employer.
The same year, Gomez went to Spain to pronounce a culture of “awake” speech. Two years later, when the Dodgers honored a troop of dragsters for his charitable work that dresses in the habits of the nuns, Gomez held what he described as a mass of “healing” which was equivalent to an attempted exorcism on behalf of the city.
Of all the reasons why Gomez could have organized a commemorative service in the city of Angels, This Was it?
While the Cardinal College meets at the Vatican in the coming weeks to elect the successor of François, Gomez, a simple archbishop, will remain at home. He is about two years older before having to send the next pope the letter of resignation required of all bishops and cardinals when they are 75 years old.
At the Archbishop Gomez, I say: Repent to your disappointing mandate. Find the inspiration for the death of Papá Francisco. Give the help he needs, while you still have time.
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