Mahony Is Installed as Archbishop

The Most Rev. Roger Michael Mahony, 49, was officially installed as the nation’s youngest Roman Catholic archbishop and spiritual head of the most populous archdiocese in the United States during elaborate ceremonies Thursday night.

Mahony takes over leadership of nearly 3 million Catholics in the sprawling, three-county archdiocese, succeeding Cardinal Timothy Manning as the fourth archbishop of Los Angeles.

Hundreds of religious, civic and government dignitaries jammed St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles to attend the colorful rites and heard the new archbishop pledge that he would give special concern to the poor and underprivileged.

Noting that Los Angeles has more miles of freeway than any other city in the world, Mahony said in his sermon Thursday night that the gigantic freeway system can obscure the “often invisible” poor. “The very freeway system that joins the worlds of culture and opportunity with the worlds of great hotels and restaurants allows those who use them to drive right over the poor. The poor are unseen beneath us,” Mahony said, adding:

“You can drive from the center of our city to Long Beach and never see Watts or our black brothers and sisters still struggling . . . for basic human dignity and opportunity. . . . In East Los Angeles you would overlook them . . . because the crowds of youth by the liquor stores and the old men shuffling through the streets have become so common.”

He suggested, however, that the freeways and streets around them could become an avenue to put people of diverse ways of life together to improve human life and dignity.

Mahony, who has been the bishop of Stockton in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley for the last five years, already has earned a reputation for liberal social concern coupled with stern doctrinal loyalty to the church.

He has confronted such issues as minority and immigration rights, illegal aliens, nuclear disarmament, abortion and U.S. economic policy. He also has insisted that doctrinal teaching under his jurisdiction must have his express approval and hew to official Vatican policy.

Mahony’s remarks in the cathedral left no doubt that he intends to make these concerns hallmarks of his ministry in Southern California.

The rites of religious pomp and ceremony began at the back door of the 109-year-old Baroque, Spanish-style cathedral at 2nd and Main streets. There, Manning, 75, presented the new archbishop to Bishop John Ward, vicar general of the archdiocese, who welcomed Mahony on behalf of the area’s faithful.

Msgr. John Rohde, president of the Archdiocesan Senate of Priests, presented a small crucifix to Mahony containing a sliver of bone from the body of Padre Junipero Serra, the Franciscan friar who founded the California mission chain and introduced Catholicism to the Indians about 200 years ago. Then, Msgr. Royale Vadakin, rector of St. Vibiana’s, gave holy water to the new archbishop, who sprinkled the people as he walked down the main aisle of the cathedral to the altar.

After Pio Laghi, the papal ambassador, had read the official letter from Pope John Paul II appointing Mahony as archbishop, Laghi and Manning escorted Mahony to the bishop’s chair and handed him a brightly polished silver crosier, or pastoral staff, symbolic of his office as shepherd of the flock. The crosier first belonged to Bishop Thaddeus Amat, who built St. Vibiana’s in 1876.

Mahony sat for a full minute holding the crosier while the audience applauded loudly and the cathedral bells tolled.

Mahony’s flock, numbering 2.56 million, is the largest archdiocese, in numbers, in the United States, having surpassed Chicago in 1983. The archdiocese, which includes Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is served by 1,313 priests, 149 “brothers” (priests who are members of orders) and 2,484 “sisters,” or nuns in orders. The wealth of the archdiocese, which includes one of the nation’s largest parochial-school systems and 23 hospitals, has been estimated at more than $1 billion.

Headed by Manning since 1970, the Los Angeles Archdiocese has maintained what many observers have considered a surprisingly low national profile. Manning, following the no-nonsense and forceful leadership of Cardinal James McIntyre, was soft-spoken and used personal kindness to influence others. He was regarded as more of a spiritual counselor than a hardheaded administrator.

Mahony appears to be both outspoken and outgoing in personality, and in his remarks Thursday night he set the tone for a ministry that will stress social justice, the dignity of human life and the interaction of the church with contemporary society.

“I shall take seriously my charge as your new archbishop to renew continually God’s call to our community and Jesus’ teachings as they touch upon our contemporary society,” Mahony said in his homily, adding:

“The church is most herself when she makes her own that world of suffering and anxiety, of underprivilege and exploitation, of destitution and hopelessness. . . . As your new chief shepherd, I shall always have an abiding love and concern for the whole flock entrusted to me, but I must always be concerned about those who fall behind or wander from the general movement of the flock of Christ.”

The new archbishop, who was ordained a priest in Fresno 23 years ago, also condemned abortion, urging “our medical centers to a renewed recognition of . . . human life from the moment of its conception through natural death,” protested “sexual exploitation, racial or gender stereotypes and brutal violence” and deplored “the billions of dollars spent here annually to develop and fuel an arms race that impoverishes and threatens the entire world.”

Mahony, who is bilingual, offered a special greeting in Spanish to “my Hispanic brothers and sisters”--estimated to include at least 40% of the archdiocese’s Catholics--and pledged to work closely with the area’s Latino communities.

Mahony is widely known in Latino circles for his work supporting illegal aliens while he was in Fresno and Stockton. In 1975, Mahony was appointed by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. as chairman of the newly formed Agricultural Labor Relations Board for 1 1/2 years. He took the side of the farm workers seeking to unionize.

Mahony grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He studied for the priesthood at Our Lady Queen of Angels High School Seminary in Mission Hills, where he was empowered Wednesday night during brief ceremonies to take control of the archdiocese. After high school, he earned bachelor’s degrees at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, and a master’s degree in social work at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

In 1981, Mahony entered the growing national policy debate over the morality of nuclear deterrence, becoming one of the first U.S. Catholic bishops to oppose Reagan Administration policy. He wrote his own pastoral letter on the topic, more than a year before the country’s bishops issued their own joint letter on war and peace.

Six cardinals, in addition to Manning, attended the rites, plus a dozen archbishops and about 80 Catholic bishops from the United States and other countries. Special guests also included William Wilson, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican; former California Govs. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and Edmund G. Brown Jr., a former Jesuit seminarian, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp and many other state and local government officials.