Tortilla Priest’s Faith Weathers Test : Religion: Salandini’s stand with Cesar Chavez angered church officials, but priest remains committed to helping farm workers.

Just before Father Victor Salandini began his sermon at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Escondido on Sunday, he made a little confession: The Tortilla Priest, as he is commonly known, was nervous.

“My dear friends . . . (there are) many incidents in Christ’s life where he met opposition from people to whom he had come to preach the good news,” the 63-year-old priest said. “Reminiscing on my own life, I remember times like that myself.”

At that same church in 1966, the priest recalled, he set the congregation on edge by delivering a sermon about the plight of California’s farm workers. Some St. Mary’s parishioners--most of them farmers--responded by storming out of the church in protest.

The same year, Salandini was arrested with labor organizer Cesar Chavez for trespassing on a grape grower’s property in Borrego Springs. Then in 1971, San Diego’s then-Bishop Leo T. Maher suspended Salandini briefly after he wore a serape emblazoned with Chavez’s stylized eagle instead of vestments and--in an act that earned him his nickname--substituted corn tortillas for Communion wafers during Mass.

In these and several other episodes, San Diego County has proved to be a place of both comfort and conflict for Salandini, the son of a well-to-do Escondido grape grower. But on Sunday, as he celebrated his 39 controversial years in the priesthood at the church where he was ordained, he said that

returning to St. Mary’s was like coming home.

Nearby, he said, were the 10 acres of prime downtown real estate once owned by his father--and not far from there, the 40-acre wine-grape ranch where his parents made their living. When he decided to become a priest, he said, he had already spent years working at his father’s ranch and picking oranges in the area. He knew farming, and respected the farmers he knew.

But in the late 1950s, when he served as a chaplain to 6,000 farm workers in El Centro, he discovered that many farmers were paying their workers low wages and providing them with substandard housing and deplorable working conditions.

“I discovered that farm workers were in need of many things, and not just spiritual things,” he said in his sermon Sunday, which retraced the steps that led him to devote his life to the farm labor movement. “I started then to try to bring to the attention of the public both the spiritual and material needs of the farm workers. The pulpit was the vehicle I used to publicize their plight.”

This unorthodox use of the church has won Salandini both friends and enemies. Chavez is a trusted ally--Salandini has married three of Chavez’s children and several of his nieces. And on Sunday, Salandini’s sermon closed with a reading of a letter in which Chavez regretted not being able to attend the celebration.

“Forgive us for not being with you today as you are always with us,” said the letter, in which Chavez explained he had to be in Mexicali on Sunday to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the death of a striking farm worker. “On behalf of the Farm Workers whom you have served well, we send you heartfelt gratitude for your years of support, stretching back to a time when very few recognized our struggle.”

If Sunday’s sermon was any measure, Salandini has made some progress since his last sermon at St. Mary’s more than 1,000 Sundays before: no one walked out of this one. One Escondido farmer who remembered the priest’s first visit said he was upset by his second Salandini sermon.

“The last time I heard him it was exactly the same,” he said, refusing to give his name or to describe the crops he has grown for 41-years. “Farmer is a four-letter word to Father Salandini. He never talks about the good farmers. I treat my men good. You’ve got to provide for them to help themselves. Money isn’t everything.”

But several other parishioners said they admired Salandini’s work on behalf of Mexican laborers.

“Where would we be without the farmworkers?” asked Maddalena Pizzo, a seamstress who was among about two dozen who attended a reception in the priest’s honor. “We need them so badly.”

Mary McKegney, a semi-retired bookkeeper who has worshiped at St. Mary’s for eight years, agreed.

“It’s wonderful that they have a champion,” she said. “Each human being is equal in the sight of God. The ones who are taking advantage of these poor people should feel guilty.”

However, Salandini’s outspokenness about labor issues, racism and the shortcomings of the Catholic Church has cost him, he says. For 19 years, he says, he has been forbidden to preach in most Catholic churches in San Diego County. Without a parish, he has supported himself since 1983 by working as a substitute teacher in the San Diego and Sweetwater public schools.

Salandini is accomplished: He has a doctorate in economics and has been recognized, he says, as a Chicano studies scholar by Stanford University. In the 1960s and 1970s, he spent eight years teaching farm-labor issues at San Diego State University, Fresno State College and other institutions.

But he has been less than popular with top Catholic officials. After Maher suspended him in 1971, the Bishop called him a man with “a grave persecution complex.” More recently, when it was announced that the ailing Maher would be replaced by Bishop Robert H. Brom, Salandini said, he asked Maher if he would recommend him to Brom.

“He said, ‘No. You have poor judgment and no common sense, (you) are too emotional about the farm labor issue and are not prudent,’ ” Salandini recalled.

So, he says, he has made his own way, teaching English at night to earn extra money and co-founding the Cardjn Center, an avant-garde Catholic group of about 200 families that Salandini describes as “a thorn in the Bishop’s side.” The center, of which Salandini is the chaplain, is committed to implementing the social doctrine of the church--in essence, showing preference to the poor.

“Like St. Paul, I’m a tent maker. When you are a tent maker, you don’t owe to anybody. Many priests can’t hurt the hand that feeds them. And I respect that,” he said. “But I’d be willing to take any risks. My hands aren’t tied.”

Father Jim Cribbin, an assistant pastor at St. Mary’s, acknowledged the economic ties that bind some clergymen, keeping them from speaking out--or in some cases, from even associating with Salandini.

“Priests tend to be in the middle class or upper-middle class. And some priests probably do not think it’s expedient to be associated with him. And that’s sad,” he said, adding that he believes sometimes the church gives only “lip service” to helping the downtrodden. “In that sense, he’s unique in that he’s taken a very strong stand.”

Salandini says he has no plans to slow down. Chavez has asked him to help publicize a boycott of the Vons grocery store chain. Perturbed that the Catholic Church has used non-union construction workers to build and repair its buildings, he is rallying union contractors to bid on future church projects. And when he can, he says, he will continue his practice of saying Mass in the farm worker camps in North County.

“I will, till the day I die, speak out,” said Salandini, who rejects his critics’ suggestion that he is more politician than cleric. “As a priest, I have to stand for social justice. What I’ve done is talk about the moral implications of the farm worker struggle. It’s a social sin, this exploitation of the workers. Why should a person be afraid to live up to his convictions?”