Theft of Marker for Priest Who Died of AIDS Called Hate Crime

When Father John W. Lord, 46, died of AIDS in 1989, many parishioners at St. Columban Catholic Church here were grief-stricken over the loss of their associate pastor.

“Father Jack,” as many called him, was hard-working and had been active helping others with AIDS, according to parishioners. To commemorate Lord, the church pastor earlier this year announced that a memorial plaque would be placed on a grassy area next to the church in his honor.

But on July 13, sometime in the night, someone used a chain saw to remove the 2 1/2-foot-tall bronze plaque from its wooden posts and carried it away.

The crime remains unsolved, and no signs of the memorial marker have been found.

“It’s been classified as (a crime of) malicious mischief, and there are no suspects. The case remains open,” said Garden Grove Police Lt. Stu Finkelstein on Monday.

Some in the parish believe the theft was a hate crime, motivated by fear and hatred of anyone who has AIDS.

A woman in the parish, who asked not to be identified, said: “I deplore hate crimes, and this is what it was, plain and simple. I was very upset, as were others.”

St. Columban’s pastor, Father Eamon O’Gorman, on Monday said he agreed that the incident was probably a hate crime.

“It was not vandalism,” O’Gorman said. “I would tend to agree that the act was rooted in hatred.”

The pastor said he doubts that anyone in the parish committed the crime. There was no furor over the cause of Lord’s death and no disagreement about the plans to honor him with the marker, he said.

“I announced the plans around Easter time, and there was never any issue raised about it,” O’Gorman said. “A family in the parish donated the plaque, and I don’t remember how much it cost. The plaque was a very simple thing. It simply told his ordination date (as a priest) and the date of his death.”

O’Gorman said he was not at the church the night the memorial plaque was stolen from a grassy area at the side of the church at 10801 Stanford Ave., but that other priests recalled hearing the sound of a saw around midnight.

“Usually it’s very quiet around our church,” O’Gorman said.

If the marker is not found, he said, it will be replaced.

When Lord died, Bishop Norman F. McFarland of the Catholic Diocese of Orange said there was a “special sadness” because Lord “was a young man with great potential.”

Lord, a native of Brookline, Mass., had been at St. Columban’s for six years before his death. In 1986, before finding out he had AIDS, Lord helped form Orange County’s AIDS Ministry Ecumenical Network (AMEN), a group of about a dozen clergymen who volunteered to help relatives and officiate at funerals of AIDS victims. County AIDS officials said that before 1986, few clergymen offered such help.

At the time of Lord’s death, Catholic officials said they did not know, nor were they concerned with, how the priest acquired the deadly AIDS virus. AIDS is spread by sexual contact, use of the same needle for drugs or other injections, or by tainted blood transfusions. O’Gorman said Lord had had a blood transfusion seven years before his death.

The theft and destruction of the simple marker is “deplorable,” said Tim Miller of the Orange County-based AIDS Response Program. “Something like this is not just an act against an AIDS victim. It’s an act against humanity.”