The Archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gómez and the late Pope Francis assumed his positions two years apart.
Both were Latinos pioneers: Gomez became the first head of the American archdiocese born in Mexico in 2011, and Francis became the first Pontiff of the Americas in 2013.
Both hereditary disorder left by their predecessors: Gomez needed to correct his SEE after decades of sexual abuse scandals under Cardinal Roger Mahony, and Francis had to discover how to govern in the shadow of Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign in almost 600 years.
Each one comes from religious movements, for a long time, controversial in the Catholic world: the progressive Jesuits by Francis, the conservative opus dei for Gomez. Both obtained applause for doing the hard work of ministering blue neck cities: Buenos Aires for Francis, San Antonio for Gomez. That is why Catholics worldwide received them hot, and crowned them with the expectation of making history.
After his death the day after Easter at 88, Francis was acclaimed by pushing Catholics and others to abandon egotism and materialism in favor of a friendlier and more tolerant world focused mainly on marginalized.
The man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio supervised a church that grew from 1.3 billion Catholics when he began 1,400 million today, according to Vatican figures. His reign was not perfect, and his liberal creed antagonized enough conservative Catholics that has emerged a counter -moan in the United States, complete with his own conferences, private schools and publications. However, the story will remember Francis as a Pope of consequence, who knew at the proverbial moment in a way that would proud San Pedro.
In a statement after Francisco's death, Archbishop Gómez prayed for Catholics to remember the call of the Pope “to urgent tasks that are not yet finished”, such as standing with the oppressed, evangelizing and creating a peaceful world.
It's a good feeling, and I hope Gomez really takes it seriously.
In an area that used to produce influential Catholic churches in the way the Dodgers produced rookies of the year, Gomez has been equivalent to the living equivalent of a hair shirt: a piety mode that serves anyone but the user.
Los Angeles has changed powerfully since Gomez started here 14 years ago. The poor have become poorer, and the rich have retired to their houses protected by the camera. Corruption has infected the political body, leaving an abyss in desperate local leadership because someone fills. In the last five years, Angelen has resisted COVID, the city's audio escape scandal, the fires of Palisades and Eaton, and now the spectrum of rates and immigration rates that devastate a global city.
However, Gomez has largely urged his flock to bring contemplative lives in the name of Jesus, Mary and Los Santos, who pales the witness practiced not only by Francis but by many in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
A photograph of the auxiliary bishop David G. O'Connell is near the entrance of the cathedral of Our Lady of Los Angeles in 2023. O'Connell was shot dead at his home in Hacienda Heights.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
This is where Father Luis Olivares challenged church and government officials so that the church of La Placita is a sanctuary for Central American refugees during the 1980s. Where Father Gregory Boyle created homeboy industries to bring dignity and meaning to the life of former gang members. Where since the 1980s, Father John Moretta has advised the parishioners in the Church of the Resurrection in Boyle Heights about the problems that affect his neighborhood.
Where one of Gómez's own auxiliary bishops, the late David O'Connell, fought against environmental racism on behalf of the black parishioners in southern Los Angeles, was with comfortable hotel workers and prayed with parishioners outside the Planned Parenthood clinics. Where the members of the Catholic worker serve free meals in Skid Row.
When I think of those examples and many more, I think of Pope Francis. I do not think of Gomez, and it is a shame.
There was a time when the archbishop seemed to work in that kingdom of the beatitudes. In 2013, he launched a book entitled “Immigration and Next America” that advocated comprehensive immigration reform and the value of all people entering this country. As recently as 2020, the cathedral of Our Lady of Los Angeles touched her bells in Memory of George Floyd, while Gomez used her usual letter to Angelenos to denounce racism as “a blasphemy against God” and urged everyone to “eliminate racial injustice that still infects too many areas of US society.”
But as she became more progressive, Gomez retired in her conservatism.
During his three years as the first Latin chief of the US Catholic Bishops Conference. UU., Gomez remained meaningless instead of real problems. When Joe Biden, a liberal and life Catholic, was inaugurated president, the archbishop wrote a letter accusing him of planning “to advance in moral evils” such as homosexual marriage, abortion rights and contraception financed by the employer.
That same year, Gomez traveled to Spain to deliver a culture of “awakening.” Two years later, when the Dodgers honored for their charity work a drag company that dresses with the habits of nuns, Gomez held what he described as a mass of “healing” that was equivalent to an attempt at exorcism in the name of the entire city.
Of all the reasons, Gomez could have celebrated a commemorative service in the city of Los Angeles, this Was?
When the Cardinals College meets in the Vatican in the coming weeks to choose the successor of Francis, Gómez, a mere archbishop, will stay at home. He is about two more years before he has to send the next Pope the required renunciation letter of all bishops and cardinals when they turn 75.
For Archbishop Gómez, I say: regret your disappointing possession. Find inspiration in the death of Dad Francisco. Give Los Angeles the help you need, while you still have time.
