Franciscan friars from around the world will...

Franciscan friars from around the world will convene for more than a month in San Diego starting Friday,--the first time in the Catholic order’s history it has met in North America.

Since their founding in 1209 by St. Francis of Assisi, the robed Franciscans of the Order of Friars Minor have met every six years, usually in Rome or Assisi, to elect a minister general and General Council.

Father John Vaughn, the outgoing minister general and a native of Santa Ana, will be the homilist in the opening 9 a.m. Mass in Founders Chapel at the convention site, the University of San Diego. He is completing his second six-year term as head of the 19,214-member order.

Vaughn said the decision to meet in North America was prompted by the 500th anniversary next year of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas.

“Our missionaries were among those who brought the Christian faith to the peoples of the Americas, in the ways they knew best at the time, with much courage and self-sacrifice,” Vaughn said.

Among the nearly 150 voting delegates will be--for the first time since the start of World War II--friars from several Eastern European countries who are being allowed by their new governments to attend the international conference. Approximately 50 other friars will attend as staff and translators.

The election of a new minister general will be held June 13. The meeting ends July 1.

PEOPLE

Cantor Nathan Lam of Los Angeles’ Stephen S. Wise Temple has became the first hazzan (cantor) of a Reform synagogue to be elected president of the Cantors Assembly, an arm of the Conservative wing of Judaism. The election was held during the recent annual meeting of the international body in Los Angeles. Lam also has the distinction of being the first Assembly president from west of Chicago.

DATES

“Those Holy Roots . . . ,” a documentary on African-American spiritual and gospel music in Los Angeles since the 1930s, will air Monday at 4 p.m. on Channel 18 in Los Angeles and Channel 48 in San Diego, in addition to showings on cable channels. Included are segments featuring the Rev. James Cleveland, Jester Hairston, Mahalia Jackson, Gwen Lightner and Billy Preston.

The Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Church, known as “the Onion” because of its unusual architecture, will be the site of a World Invocation Day gathering at 7:45 p.m. Monday--an annual meditation session that attracts people of various religious persuasions who believe that focused prayer or reflection can influence world events.

The Latin Liturgy Assn. will begin a three-day national convention at Loyola Marymount University on Friday night with a concert of sacred music. The 2,000-member organization was founded in 1975 to promote the celebration of the revised Roman Catholic Mass in Latin.