L.A. Hospice for Victims of AIDS Planned by Archdiocese

Archbishop Roger Mahony, concluding a weekend prayer vigil for victims of AIDS, announced Sunday that he has begun discussions with local Catholic health care officials to establish a hospice within the Los Angeles Archdiocese to care for patients dying from the disease.

Mahony said he has asked Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, to provide a staff from her Calcutta-based Missionaries of Charity to run the hospice.

The proposed facility for acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients would be the third in the United States administered by the Roman Catholic Church. A 14-bed facility, also run by Mother Teresa’s missionaries, began operations last month in a parish hall in New York’s Greenwich Village. A 15-bed hospice is due to open in San Francisco’s Castro District in September.

“We have the duty to help relieve what physical and psychological suffering can be relieved by sharing in the medical, social and overall sustenance of those afflicted, particularly those needing shelter and unable to work,” Mahony said.

In his message, delivered at the end of a 40-hour prayer vigil held over the weekend at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood, the Archbishop said he would assign a group of priests to “take special pastoral responsibility” for AIDS victims. Mahony said he had directed Rev. John McEnhill, a Marianist priest and a trained psychologist, to oversee the group.

Mahony also moved to strengthen ties with homosexuals in the archdiocese, saying he would establish workshops for priests to better understand the needs of gay Catholics. According to homosexual activists in attendance at the Mass, the archbishop even broke new ground by addressing Catholic homosexuals for the first time as “gay Catholics” instead of “homosexuals.”

“He showed great courage in just using that expression to talk to us,” said James Highland, former president of Dignity, a local group of homosexuals and lesbians who are practicing Catholics.

Homosexuals among the audience of more than 1,000 people who attended the Sunday Mass gave the Archbishop two enthusiastic standing ovations. When Mahony finished his message at the end of the Mass, Morris Kight, a veteran gay activist, leaped to his feet, murmuring: “This is awesome, simply awesome.” In the pew behind him, a man wearing a tan leather jacket rose, weeping silently and applauding.

After the service, Mahony said in a brief interview that he has been holding preliminary discussions with the Archdiocese’s Council of Priests about the hospice and other AIDS-related activities “for the past several months.” He said the 40-hour AIDS prayer vigil was “the perfect opportunity” to make those plans public.

Mahony said he could not give many details about the hospice proposal, saying “it is still too early” to know how it will be run or where it will be located. “There have been several locations suggested, but nothing is certain,” he said.

‘A Human Touch’

The Archbishop did say that he wants the hospice to be “small enough so that we would still have the human touch. If the place was too big, we might defeat our purpose.”

Mahony said he hopes that the hospice proposal will be completed by May, when Mother Teresa is expected to arrive in Los Angeles to receive an undisclosed humanitarian award.

“We should know a lot more by the time I meet with her,” he said.

Last month, Mother Teresa’s missionaries opened a small hospice in Greenwich Village, which immediately took in 14 dying AIDS victims, including three inmates who had been serving prison sentences at the Sing Sing state penitentiary for robbery.

In San Francisco, the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church and a private hospice group are in the process of converting a convent in the Castro District into a 15-bed facility for dying AIDS patients.

Rev. Tony McGuire said the church leased the convent to the private firm on the condition that the unit be used primarily for AIDS patients. McGuire said parishioners are raising funds to pay for the conversion and have even volunteered to provide emotional support to AIDS victims when the hospice opens in September.

Counseling in L.A.

In the Los Angeles area, dying AIDS victims have been able to receive counseling and emotional support at shelters provided by the AIDS Project Los Angeles. Michael Phillips, a gay activist, said the project maintains at least two shelters where AIDS victims have been referred to in the past.

“What makes this (the proposed Archdiocese hospice) unique is that the Archbishop is openly doing something to comfort people with this disease,” Phillips said. “He is extending the arms of the Church to gay Catholics.”

After his sermon, Mahony said that the hospice beds would not be limited to Catholic patients. “I would think the hospice should serve victims of any faith or belief,” he said.

Despite his warm words to Catholic homosexual parishioners, the Archbishop also urged gay Catholics to practice chastity.

“Our moral teaching compels us, as medicine has done, to look at the activities that place persons in high risk of contracting AIDS and of jeopardizing the health of other persons,” he said.

Matter of Responsibility

Some gay activists present at the sermon later said they were not troubled by the call to chastity. “He is saying that it’s OK to be gay and Catholic, but he’s also telling us we have to be responsible,” Phillips said. “He is simply following the dictates of the Church.”

But one gay AIDS victim confronted the Archbishop outside the Spanish Colonial-style church after the sermon and said he found little comfort in Mahony’s words.

“Where will you bury us when we die?” the man asked, his voice quavering.

“There are a lot of tough things asked of us in the Gospel,” the Archbishop replied before the man was led away by several friends.

During his sermon, Mahony made reference to a 1976 pastoral letter by the National Conference of Bishops, which stated that “homosexuals are called to give witness to chastity, avoiding, with God’s grace, behavior which is wrong for them, just as nonmarital sexual relations are wrong for heterosexuals.”

Confronting a Conflict

While other Los Angeles churches have conducted similar services dedicated to AIDS victims, Blessed Sacrament is the first local Roman Catholic church to so vigorously confront the conflict between its doctrine--homosexuality is regarded as a sinful “social maladaptation”--and the reality of life around its Hollywood parish.

According to Rev. William Thom, roughly 20% of the parish’s 5,000 members are homosexual, and a few have been afflicted by the fatal disease.

“I buried eight of our own parishioners just last year,” he said.

“I think the general idea (behind the prayer vigil) is we can all consider ourselves sinners,” Thom said. “And we look at the person and not the sin. We wouldn’t have any church probably if we didn’t go out to sinners.”

Thom said all Catholic churches annually conduct such vigils, and have since the 1500s, when the Italian city of Milan first prayed for the end of a plague.

Growing Presence

But last fall, Parish Council President Jim Curtan suggested that this year’s observance be broadened into a devotional for AIDS, in view of the growing presence of homosexual church members. The 14-member advisory council unanimously agreed.

“My feeling is that the church is called to minister to the sick,” Curtan explained. “What we’re praying for is relief from a catastrophic illness and the people who have it. One of the things the church teaches us is to look for Christ in other people.”

Times staff writer Mark Arax also contributed to this article.