Mahony Uses Sports Arena for 3 Bishops’ Ordination

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, never faulted for thinking small during his 1 1/2 years of heading the nation’s most populous Roman Catholic archdiocese, Monday night used a new and expansive venue for multilingual ordination rites for three new auxiliary bishops--the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Los Angeles bishops, including Mahony himself, have always been ordained or installed at the 1,300-seat St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, but the archbishop decided to hold the ceremony instead in the 16,350-seat arena in an effort to open the ceremony to as many of the 2.6 million Catholics in the archdiocese as possible.

An estimated 16,000 people, including more than 400 priests, watched the pageantry unfold around a central altar and under banners and carved angel wings suspended from the arena’s girders.

Latino Bishop

The new bishops, appointed by Pope John Paul II in late December, are Carl Fisher of Baltimore, a Josephite father who became the first black Catholic bishop in California and the 11th in this country; Armando Ochoa, a Lincoln Heights pastor who is the second Latino bishop for the archdiocese, and G. Patrick Ziemann, who was vice rector and dean of studies at Our Lady, Queen of the Angels Seminary in San Fernando.

In a highlight of the traditional ritual, Mahony and his present auxiliary bishops, John Ward and Juan Arzube, and each of the other 40 bishops present, all placed their hands on the bowed heads of the bishops-elect. With each of the auxiliary bishops now assigned to one of five different regional posts in the archdiocese, Catholic officials have finally put in place an administrative reorganization and pastoral plan worked out in 1986.

The auxiliaries are expected to represent the archbishop in visiting their portion of the archdiocese’s 285 parishes and to oversee the implementation of church priorities decided at a convocation last November. The office can also be a steppingstone within the hierarchy. Four former Los Angeles auxiliary bishops now head their own dioceses.

Mahony, in his homily, contrasted what he indicated were sacred church values with “shallow” secular viewpoints. He called for the new bishops to show love for all--not “a popularized understanding as one might find in a shallow television sitcom.”