Priest Turns Producer for Papal Mass

Father Arthur A. Holquin, chief organizer of Tuesday’s concert and papal Mass at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, recognized the enormity of his task the moment he was tapped for the job by Archbishop Roger Mahony.

“My primary responsibility was to shape that ceremony, that environment, so it would not look like a rock concert but a place of worship,” the 39-year-old Orange County priest said the other day. “There’s a fine line between festivity and celebration on one hand, and ostentatious pomp on the other. I wanted to avoid the latter.”

So, despite the fears of some concerned with the civic predisposition to glitz, Holquin said he has managed to avoid “horses and herald trumpeters” at the gathering, which is expected to draw more than 100,000 worshipers. Unlike Al Davis and the Raiders, Holquin said, “I couldn’t be happier with having the Coliseum,” and, through television, “with millions of people being able to enter this event.”

Through the planning process, Holquin said, “I’ve learned a great deal about things I never thought I would,” from television camera angles to trade union protocol. “It’s been fascinating for me to see how a producer orchestrates all this.” There were trips around the country to meet with planning counterparts.

Holquin is Orange County’s major contribution to the papal visit to the Southland, apart from financial contributions and the presence of an estimated 14,000 parishioners at the Coliseum. His official title is “Master of Ceremonies of Deacons,” making him responsible for directing traffic around John Paul II on the platform, itself the work of another Orange County priest.

For Holquin, a diminutive man with a soothing voice and elfin smile, the concept of celebration has always been important.

“We had a very close-knit family,” he recalled, relaxing in his modest, two-room suite at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Fountain Valley. “My father loved parties,” he said, and it was in the Holquins’ San Fernando Valley home that “I learned what it meant to celebrate.”

Music was also a strong influence on his life. “I have always had a love for the liturgy of worship,” he said, remembering in particular his youthful visits to a Benedictine monastery to hear the monks sing.

Even funerals were occasions for celebration, Holquin said. As a high school student, he recalled being greatly affected by watching the funeral of President John Kennedy on television.

“It was something that brought home to me the power of religious symbols and civil ritual,” he said. “It had a profound influence on me.”

When his father died several years ago, Holquin organized the service and afterward said, “We had a wonderful celebration.”

Holquin, who for the last eight years has been director of liturgy for the Diocese of Orange, and the last three years director of evangelization as well, came to the job of organizing the Coliseum event about as well prepared as any priest could be.

In addition to undergraduate and graduate degrees from St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Holquin earned a licentiate in sacramental studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium. He planned the 1976 installation of William R. Johnson, the founding bishop of Orange County, Johnson’s funeral in 1986, and the installation of Johnson’s successor, Bishop Norman F. McFarland, earlier this year.

Almost as soon as he heard the rumors of a papal visit to Southern California, Holquin said, “I had a very strong premonition I’d be involved in some way.”

For L.A. Catholics

More than a year before the visit, Mahony asked to “borrow” Holquin from the Diocese of Orange in order to plan the Coliseum Mass, which was designed for worshipers from Southern California who live outside Los Angeles County. The Dodger Stadium Mass on Wednesday is for Los Angeles County Catholics. Among the Orange County Catholics at the Coliseum Mass are 21 worshipers chosen to receive communion from John Paul II.

Working for Mahony was “wonderful,” Holquin said, largely because “it hasn’t been a situation of having someone hovering over me.”

Among the challenges Holquin faced were the logistics of organizing more than 600 priests to serve communion to more than 100,000 people in less than 20 minutes; putting on a tasteful, entertaining concert for less than $100,000; designing and building a platform and altar that would transform a huge stadium into a more intimate “liturgical environment.”

“I knew this was going to be a mammoth undertaking,” Holquin said, and he lost little time getting started. “I admit to a certain obsessive-compulsive side to my behavior.”

A believer in the divide-and-conquer approach to large projects, Holquin did most of the dividing and then began calling on people for help in the conquering department.

Among the estimated 100 people involved were Father Jeff Thies of St. Joseph’s in Santa Ana, who was put in charge of the communion. McCoy-Rigby Productions, the Long Beach firm run by Tom McCoy and Cathy Rigby, got the pre-Mass concert. Father Rod Stephens of St. Polycarp in Stanton got the call to design the platform and altar.

“The people I’m working with are tops--extremely competent and responsible,” he said. “I exercise oversight,” he added, preferring to treat subordinates with the same respect that Mahony gave him. “I want to respect people as persons, not as tasks,” he said, which has necessitated a “certain amount of hand-holding.”

(Evidently, no amount of hand-holding could keep Placido Domingo from backing out of the pre-Mass concert when he learned that the Pope would not be in the Coliseum to hear him sing.)

As with any complex undertaking, there was some friction, Holquin said. “It was not always clear where the lines of authority were,” he said, which made it difficult for someone who does not consider himself “a cut-throat, hard-nosed bureaucrat. There have been times when I have had to be firm, but I’m reluctant to use the imperial fiat.”

Despite being thrust into the spotlight, albeit briefly, Holquin said planning the Coliseum Mass has not caused him to lose perspective or to wonder if it might be more rewarding to be an impresario than a priest.

“I wanted to be a priest ever since I was in the second grade,” he said, and his residence at Holy Spirit is no coincidence. Living at the parish, which serves about 1,500 families, provides him an opportunity for what he calls “front-line involvement”: preaching on Sundays, doing some counseling and being available in the event of emergencies. “I could be working on the Pope’s visit,” he said. “I get a sick call, I drop it and go.”

Holquin earns high praise from McFarland, who calls him “a very good organizer” and “a detail man who sees the whole picture. I’m very impressed. He doesn’t get uptight or upset under pressure. It’s so good to have a man of his caliber here. He’s such a boon to the diocese.” When the Coliseum Mass is over, Holquin said, “I’m probably just going to go to my mom’s in the San Fernando Valley for some home-cooked Mexican food,” followed by a week’s vacation at Capistrano Beach. “I know it sounds mundane, but the worst part of this whole thing has been driving into Los Angeles from Orange County.”