Mahony Chose Priesthood Early : Mother Recalls New Archbishop’s Childhood on Farm

Loretta Mahony remembers the day her 12-year-old son, Roger, came home from school in North Hollywood and announced that he wanted to become a priest.

“We thought he was just going through a phase then,” his mother said Thursday. “Some boys want to become policemen or firemen. Roger wanted to become a priest. We thought he’d get over it.”

He didn’t.

On Tuesday, Pope John Paul II named the lanky, Spanish-speaking priest to be archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest archdiocese with an estimated 2.5 million Catholics. At 49 he becomes the youngest archbishop in the United States.

Mahony attended St. Charles Grammar School in North Hollywood from 1942 to 1950 and Our Lady Queen of Angeles Seminary in San Fernando from 1954 to 1956. He has been serving as bishop of the 135,000-member Stockton Diocese.

Family Accepts Choice

Although at first she didn’t take seriously her son’s proclamation that he wanted to become a priest, Loretta Mahony said, she gradually learned to accept it as his chosen profession.

“He never wavered from his goal,” she said. “We knew that it meant a life of hardship and denial, but if that’s what he wanted, then we weren’t going to stand in his way.”

Mahony’s father, an electrician for Universal Studios who died in 1959, owned a poultry processing plant at Chandler and Laurel Canyon boulevards in North Hollywood. Mahony and his brothers--Louis, a fraternal twin, and Neil--used to shovel manure out of chicken coops at the five-acre ranch.

Mahony’s mother recalled a bizarre incident that she said happened in 1945, when the twins were about 9. One afternoon, after completing their chores around the poultry farm, Roger and Louis jumped older brother Neil from behind, tied him to a tree and placed dried leaves at his feet, Loretta Mahony said. Next, they set the brush afire.

Neil was rescued by his mother. He is now a 53-year-old executive with a Santa Ana sales firm.

In a telephone interview Thursday night, Archbishop Roger Mahony recalled a slightly different version of his childhood antic.

“We chained him to that tree,” he said with a laugh. “It was a cowboy-and-Indians type game. He was four or five years older than us and didn’t really take it too seriously at first. But when the fire got going he panicked.”

“It wasn’t a big fire,” he added, “but still, if mom hadn’t come, he might have gotten singed around the legs.”

Childhood Pastimes

Neil Mahony said he and his brothers often played in the flats surrounding the Los Angeles River as it winds through the San Fernando Valley. The trio would catch crayfish there.

The three brothers often went to the El Portal Theatre on Lankershim Boulevard to catch Saturday matinees.

“We were Western buffs, Lone Ranger and Gene Autry types,” Archbishop Mahony said.

The family’s farmhouse, surrounded by apricot and pear trees, was washed away in 1938. From there the family moved to Hermitage Street in North Hollywood. After that, they moved to Ben and Weddington avenues, also in North Hollywood. The family kept the poultry business operating, usually housing 3,000 to 4,000 chickens at a time.

“Anyone who wasn’t accustomed to the aroma of the place would be overcome,” Louis Mahony, a Carson steel company financial officer, said.

Tinkered With Radios

As long as any of the family members can remember, the new archbishop, who is an avid ham-radio operator, would pick through neighbors’ garbage, searching for discarded radios and radio tubes.

“Sure, I was always looking for junk, really anything to do with radios,” the new archbishop said. “I love radios, still do, and I’m hoping to put a new antenna on the cathedral rectory” in Stockton.

The family found out about his promotion Monday night.

To ensure secrecy--as well as a way to have all three family members home at Loretta Mahony’s house in Orange County--the bishop called Louis on Monday afternoon and said he needed to talk to them about a “health problem.” He said he would call at 9 that evening.

“Louis took me aside, and we immediately thought he had cancer,” Neil Mahony recalled. “We were expecting the worst.”

When the dreaded call came, Bishop Mahony told the family that he was in perfect health.

“We were so relieved that, when he told us the news about his appointment, it really didn’t hit us,” Neil Mahony said.

But, later that night, Loretta Mahony said, “We just couldn’t believe what he had said. I’ve been on a high for the last three days. It seems like a dream.”

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Marc Igler.