Priest Celebrates Anniversary With an Arrest for Peace

It was the first day of spring and a clear, sunny morning in the desert as the six protesters left the small crowd of supporters and friends standing in the gravel alongside the Mercury Highway. They joined hands and advanced to the cattle crossing that spanned the road, beyond which waited Nye County sheriff’s deputies and a sign: “You Are Now Entering the Nevada Test Site. No Trespassing. By Order of the U.S. Department of Energy.”

A deputy sheriff met them at the crossing, bade them good morning, warned them it was illegal to cross over, asked them not to do it and informed them that if they did, they would be arrested.

‘Congratulations’

“Now,” he continued, addressing the tall, gray-haired man in the middle, “are you the gentleman who is celebrating his 25th anniversary?”

“Yes, I am,” Father Don Kribs of Los Angeles answered.

“Congratulations,” the deputy said, stepping back and saying to the marchers as they gingerly maneuvered the crossing-bars: “OK. Be careful now.”

They stepped over. They were arrested and photographed on the spot and cited for trespassing.

They were, besides Kribs: Jeff Dietrich of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community, a friend of Kribs’ and an activist being arrested for perhaps, he thought, his 20th time, this time “out of solidarity with Don”; Jodie Carter, who with her husband, Vince, belongs to a small peace group in Los Angeles with Kribs; Dan Delany of the Sacramento Catholic Worker community and a high school and college classmate of Kribs’; Delany’s “crimemate” from Sacramento, Bob Sieber; and the Rev. Jane Turner, curate of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in West Los Angeles and a new friend of Kribs’ who was using the occasion of his anniversary to commit her first act of civil disobedience.

With the exception of Delany, who was taken to Beatty to be processed and serve his time immediately, the others agreed to sign their citations on the spot and were released on their own recognizance. They are to be arraigned April 16, and should they plead or be found guilty, they may be fined as much as $1,000 or imprisoned as long as six months. The experience of those who have gone before them, in demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience organized by the Nevada Desert Experience, lead them to expect a fine between $150 and $250 or a sentence of 6 to 10 days.

Kribs, ordained a priest 25 years ago this spring and in a celebrating mood, started back over the cattle crossing.

His friends applauded and cheered. Although there were many activists among them, this was no homogeneous “movement” crowd. Among those gathered were the Most Rev. William Johnson, bishop of Orange County, recovering from surgery and in a wheelchair, about 14 fellow priests, most in clerical garb, from the Los Angeles archdiocese, his sister Charlotte Bracha, Harry and Olga Steinmetz, a blind couple from St. John of God parish in Norwalk, where he served as a young priest, a handful of veiled Irish nuns, Sisters of the Holy Faith, who had known Kribs in Norwalk.

Looking momentarily free and happy as a lark, Kribs put his arms out and grinned to his friends.

“It’s done.”

On the eve of his arrest, Kribs had celebrated his anniversary Mass in the simple, little Franciscan church of St. James on the edge of Las Vegas, 65 miles southeast of the test site, in a neighborhood characterized more by soup lines and public housing projects than hotels and casinos.

Looking out at the congregation, which included about 85 people from Kribs’ past 25 years, most of whom were from Los Angeles, he greeted them before beginning the ceremony, saying, “Somebody told me a long time ago that when you’ve been ordained 25 years you can do whatever you want. So welcome to Las Vegas.”

He simply could not believe, he would say many times that night and the following day, that so many friends had responded to his invitations and come so far--in many ways--for this unique occasion.

True, it is more usual for invitations for a 25th to go out printed or engraved, requesting people’s presence at an anniversary Mass followed by a banquet at a parish hall or hotel dining room.

But those who received a photocopy of Kribs’ handwritten, two-page letter considered the source, they said in Las Vegas, and found it “just like Don.”

And while many of them would never dream of commiting an act of civil disobedience nor coming out for a demonstration, they had to be there.

Their responses ranged from a fondly exasperated Donna Strassel (secretary to Bishop Johnson), who told him, he said later, “I’m coming, damn it,” to that of Cielle Toutain of La Crescenta, a gray-haired woman in a pastel pantsuit and who said, “My answer to him was, ‘Did you have any doubt that I would be there?’ I was not surprised he did this. I’ve followed his thinking for a long time.”

So had they all.

Kribs, 51, grew up in Los Angeles, went to Loyola High School and University, entered St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo in 1955 and was ordained April 25, 1961. He worked at a number of parishes, increasingly becoming drawn to working with the poor, a process he calls (for a lack of a better word, he said) a conversion. He did not want some sort of ministry to the poor, he said. It was more a sense of “a being there, like I belong there” with the poor.

He actively supported the work of Mother Teresa. He had sold some possessions, given most of his money away and started doing war-tax resistance--withholding paying a percentage of tax, about 60% since, he said, “about 60% goes to pay for past, present and future wars.”

And, in 1975, he went to see Johnson, then an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese, rector of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, a member of the personnel board, and head of Catholic Welfare.

Johnson assigned him to St. Vincent’s Center on Skid Row, a day center for the area’s down-and-out men. Kribs said he loved it, is eternally grateful to Johnson, and worked there until 1980. Since then he has been a chaplain at County-USC Medical Center and is one of two Catholic chaplains at Rancho Los Amigos in Downey, a county rehabilitation hospital where Kribs often ministers to the same men he knew on Skid Row.

He would participate in demonstrations occasionally in those years, he said, and considered commiting civil disobedience, never quite reaching the point of action. Several years ago he joined a peace group that Jodie Carter put together. It was simple: three married couples, a priest and two nuns getting together to reflect on issues of war and peace and to discuss, at times, possible actions they would take together or individually.

He increasingly had become aware of the activities of the Nevada Desert Experience, a nonprofit organization that grew out of efforts of several Franciscans, including the current provincial of the Western Region, the Rev. Louis Vitale. It employs education, prayer, dialogue and nonviolent action to advocate a test-ban treaty and an end to nuclear weapons testing.

He made his first visit to the test site in January when Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit celebrated Mass at a vigil organized by the organization.

“On the way back, in the car, it came to me,” Kribs said. “This is how I want to celebrate my 25 years as a priest.”

He consulted several priests and his peace group, worrying most, he said, that he would be grandstanding. The message he got, he said, was “It’s who you are.”

He said he informed Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, who responded that he understood and respected the decision, and he sent out his invitations, telling people he wanted to celebrate his anniversary within the context of his “special ministry to the poor, social justice and peace.”

He timed his celebration one month ahead of his anniversary date, to coincide with the Lenten Desert Experience the organization has sponsored for the last five years. There is a daily vigil at the test site, including prayers and civil disobedience, culminating on Good Friday. This year about 1,000 are expected to participate on Good Friday, among them several hundred from Los Angeles.

As the time drew near, he said, “I was excited. I couldn’t wait to do it, which meant to me that it was long overdue.”

The mood at St. James Church the night before Kribs’ arrest was lighthearted and nostalgic. After Mass, the crowd gathered in the adjacent hall for wine and the enchiladas that Kribs’ friends from his peace group had prepared.

One of the peace group, Dick Barbarino, a captain in the Los Angeles City Fire Department, looked happy for Kribs, but when asked if he, too, planned on being arrested, pointed at his own chest in incredulity, and said, “Who, me ?”

Msgr. John Cremins, now at Bishop Amat school in La Puente, said that he had not only taught Kribs in the seminary, but most of those priests gathered for the anniversary, and said he was “very happy to see (Kribs) realize what he’s thought for so long.”

Johnson admired him too, he said, and generally described him as a great priest who was setting an example for others, although, he said, he thought it was “terrible to put people like this in jail.”

“That’s the whole point they’re making,” another priest told him.

The next morning they reconvened at the test site at 6:30, in order, they said, to be there when the workers arrived.

About 100 protesters were there, some not in Kribs’ party. They stood there with banners and posters, among them “Why Bomb Nevada?” and “Test Peace.”

To their waves and friendly greetings to workers passing in cars and buses, they received a few friendly waves in return. More often, it was a hostile finger gesture they received or a gunned motor.

When Johnson arrived, looking frail as he was helped into his wheelchair from a car, a sheriff’s deputy ran to get him something to drink, telling him to just give a yell if he needed anything.

Terry Simmons of the Nevada Desert Experience welcomed everyone, suggested they introduce themselves, indicate if they intended to get arrested, and then break for a half hour of silence, reflecting on why they were gathered, and “experiencing the land here.”

They went around the circle introducing themselves. “I’m Bill Johnson from Orange and I’m hoping not to get arrested,” said the bishop of Orange County. And they wandered off, alone or in small, quiet groups. Kribs had a cigarette, and talked to a few friends.

One, the Rev. Mark Stehly of Seattle, tears flowing down his face, came up, embraced him, put his head on the 6-foot-6 Kribs’ chest for a moment and said, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be crazy again.” His brother Tom, a priest from the San Diego diocese, and sister Virginia, a nun from Los Angeles, were also there--the whole family friends of Kribs for the past 25 years.

After the silence they circled together again for prayers, led by Brother Mark Schroeder, a Franciscan friar. Schroeder reminded them that Lent was an Anglo-Saxon word for springtime, that it was the first day of spring, and urged that they bring some of that promise of rebirth and renewal to the day’s events.

That the Department of Energy had plans for the second day of spring that included detonating a nuclear bomb some 2,000 feet below where they were standing, the first test of 1986 (which subsequently was carried out) gave an irony and urgency to Schroeder’s remarks.

Prayers ended, they were ready to go.

When it was over, Kribs described himself as overjoyed as he looked. “I was anxious to say that,” he said of the symbolic statement of the arrest. He will be returning to Las Vegas next month for his arraignment and expects not to pay a fine but to serve time.

“I know,” he said, “this will be the first of many acts of civil disobedience.”