Priest Speaks Out for Civil Rights of Latinos : Activism: O.C.’s Msgr. Soto points out contributions that minorities have made, backs drywall workers’ fight.

It was supposed to be his day off, a time to relax.

But just as Msgr. Jaime Soto was preparing to leave the rectory at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church that Thursday morning, he received a telephone call that upset his plans.

The caller informed him that more than a hundred striking drywall workers had been arrested for trespassing on a South County construction site and also faced felony charges, later dropped, of conspiracy to kidnap some non-striking workers who, willingly or unwillingly, had accompanied the strikers when they left the job site.

“I cringed,” the Roman Catholic priest later recalled.

In slow, measured sentences, he told how he had counseled the Latino laborers that their struggle for recognition of their union and their perfectly defensible fight for better wages would be tarnished by any desperate acts of violence and vandalism.

“They had fought for such a long time. I thought that their cause was a good one, and I also thought that this (incident) might crush” their budding labor movement, Soto said softly as he spoke of the arrests.

But while he displayed discomfort over the tactics the workers had used that day, when they invaded a construction site in large numbers to confront non-striking workers and lead them off the job, he was unwavering in his support of the workers’ movement. His voice rose and the pace of his pronouncements quickened as he spoke of the workers’ goals.

“It’s very bad social policy, it’s essentially unjust, it’s morally wrong not to pay a worker his due,” Soto said.

Guided by the precepts of his religion and his duties as the episcopal vicar of Orange County’s Latino community, the 36-year-old monsignor likes to prick the conscience of Orange County’s Anglo community by speaking out for the rights of Latinos.

Frustrated by the white majority’s seeming unease over the growing ethnic diversity in Orange County, Soto is quick to point out the contributions that minorities have made to the county’s social fabric.

While most local residents nod approvingly over roundups of illegal immigrants by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Soto writes essays for local newspapers about what he considers shameful violations of the immigrants’ civil rights.

And when the building industry, beset with recessionary woes, refuses to pay higher wages to immigrant Latino laborers, Soto preaches that employers are overly concerned about short-term costs, without considering the long-term benefits of incorporating Latinos into mainstream society.

“The workers are part of that whole shadow society, of the shadow economy, and these men have brought their frustrations out of the shadows and have made all of us aware that they are hard-working, contributing members of the community,” Soto said. “But my feeling is that there are some strong forces out there that want to push them back into the shadows.”

While his words may occasionally sound like those of a radical, rabble-rousing, political activist, his actions show him to be more even-tempered and pragmatic.

Soto will lend unflinching moral support to the drywall workers and will speak at their rallies, for example, but he has not hoisted one of their placards at a demonstration nor has he marched with them.

He will not barge into the board rooms of the development community or demand an audience with the governor to discuss cuts in welfare programs. But he does not hesitate to walk to nearby Delhi Park in Santa Ana, as he did recently, to broker a meeting between gang members and neighborhood leaders.

He believes that it is the people at the grass-roots level who hold the power to bring about needed change, more so than the established authorities.

The summit of political power, he said, “is not the arena of most importance to me. Most of my priesthood has been privileged by the access that normal people have given to me, to share life with them. Those relationships give me whatever credibility I have when I choose to take on Gov. Wilson’s welfare initiative, or when I choose to speak out on behalf of day laborers on Chapman Avenue. I am not concerned about whether I can walk into the governor’s office.”

As Orange County comes to grips with cultural diversity, Soto is seen by some community leaders as one of the few credible, nonpartisan voices who adds clarity to the ongoing debate over social justice issues, such as the rights of immigrants and undocumented workers, and the government’s role in providing health care and other social services.

State Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) said he has seen the monsignor influence official actions on welfare spending, for example, without ever dealing directly with officialdom.

“He believes it’s his responsibility to give every human being the tools to realize his value,” Umberg remarked.

Stephanie Gut, a staffer for the Orange County Congregation-Community Organization (OCCCO), a church-based group that shares many of Soto’s concerns, said his understated style is effective.

“He says it in such a way that you may disagree with him, but you cannot deny the legitimacy of what he is saying,” she said.

Democratic Party activist John Hanna also said Soto “does not make life comfortable. He gets on liberals about abortion and on conservatives about the rights of the poor.”

The priest’s “pro-life” agenda extends well beyond the single issue of abortion, one leader said, and is based on the dignity of the human spirit. It embraces prenatal care, postnatal care, health insurance for the poor, and shelter for the homeless.

Guided by a strong sense of what he considers right and wrong, Soto said he is trying to carry out Pope John Paul II’s stated mission--to be in solidarity with those who are poor and those being pushed to or left on the margins of society. In Orange County, he said, that translates into working for the county’s immigrants, particularly the women, the undocumented workers, children, those without health care, prisoners, and gang members.

But just as Orange County is learning how to deal with a changing population, so too is the Catholic Church, he said. And that is what makes his job so complicated now.

“The future of the church and its credibility as a social institution will depend on how it incorporates the Hispanic community, not only into its own life, but into the mainstream of civic life here in California,” he said. “That’s the question or the challenge that I live with: How do I make that happen?”

Growing up in a devoutly Catholic, middle-class home in Stanton, Soto has to think hard to remember a time that he did not want to be a priest.

His parents, both native-born U.S. citizens, came to California from Arizona and Texas. Like other Latinos two or more generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, Soto did not grow up speaking Spanish in the home and only became “serious” about the language during his third year in college.

Although his parents did not push him to master Spanish, his father did awaken him to the plight of immigrants from the mother country. Soto said he can remember his father occasionally bringing home to breakfast newly arrived immigrants he had just met at early morning Mass. Immediately after Soto’s ordination in 1982, he was assigned to St. Joseph Church in Santa Ana, where he worked with the community for such non-spiritual things as sewer line repairs and zoning changes. It was there that he came to see the parish rectory as “an emergency room for all kinds of spiritual, economic, and emotional traumas” and where he concluded that simple Band-Aid solutions would not end the cycle of Latino poverty.

Two years later, he left for New York City and Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in social work and prepared himself for a new assignment as associate director of Catholic Charities, the position he held when the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 presented Catholic Charities with a major role in completing the “amnesty” applications for thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants.

In 1989, he was named vicar of the Hispanic community for the Diocese of Orange, and a year later, was given the title of monsignor.

Auxiliary Bishop Michael Driscoll said Soto’s elevation to monsignor rank and his broad responsibilities came because Soto was recognized “as having an awful lot of talent and skill.” Driscoll also described Soto as a man with “a great talent for getting the message out and not (being) afraid to go where he needs to go.”

Soto has not merely focused on what is wrong in society, but also has attempted to be a cultural bridge between the Latino and white communities.

Last year, for example, he organized the first countywide celebration of “Dia de los Muertos,” a traditionally Latino observance of “All Souls Day” that drew thousands of Catholics to a cemetery in Orange. He also has publicized other Latino rites associated with the usual religious holy days.

“I don’t try to push myself on the Anglo community, but I do try to be persuasive,” he said. “I think I have tried to use the media in that way. The English-language press is one of the few ways that I have of communicating with the broader Anglo audience about my concerns and, I hope, the concerns in the community.”

His comments or writings in the press sometimes provoke angry letters criticizing the diocese or him, he said. “Most of the time, it’s about immigrants, where people have expressed anger at me or anger at the church because of our identification with immigrants. There’s a lot of fear and ignorance on the part of people about what this (ethnic) diversity will bring to Orange County, and some of that fear gets directed at me or at the church.”