San Bernardino Bishop Is Named : Religion: Latino says key goal is boosting minorities’ role in church leadership.

An affable Latino priest who grew up in East Los Angeles and most recently served as auxiliary bishop for the Inland Empire was named bishop of the Diocese of San Bernardino on Thursday.

The elevation by Pope John Paul II brings the Most Rev. Gerald R. Barnes, 50, almost full circle to his boyhood home and aspirations. He entered the priesthood 20 years ago, he said, to help the Catholic Church reach out to Latinos.

Most of that time was spent overseeing religious education and developing new priests for the primarily Latino Archdiocese of San Antonio.

In 1992, Barnes was appointed auxiliary bishop and vicar of ethnic affairs for the local diocese, which spans San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

He was named temporary administrator earlier this year when the diocese’s founding bishop, the Most Rev. Phillip Straling, was reassigned by the Vatican to form a new diocese in Reno.

Now Barnes finds himself heading a growing diocese where an estimated 62% of the members are Latino, and he said his immediate challenge will be to increase the involvement of Latinos and other ethnic minorities in local church leadership.

His predecessor already had pushed for the greater participation of Latinos in the church, he said, “and those parishes which have brought those people on board are now thriving.”

But the diocese must still do more, while coping with the cost and demands of explosive growth, he said.

The diocese was formed in 1978 with about 250,000 Catholics and is expected to quadruple in size by 2000. But of the diocese’s 169 priests, including 140 assigned to 103 parishes, fewer than 20 are Latino.

The announcement to diocese employees of Barnes’ elevation was met with an immediate and vigorous standing ovation--a testament, staff members said, to Barnes’ local popularity.

“I think the Hispanic community will feel very proud,” Barnes said later, adding that his ethnicity might have played a role in his selection by the pope.

“We have trained non-Spanish-speaking priests to speak Spanish, but [also important] is learning the culture, the mind-set, the values of the people, and many times you need to immerse yourself in that kind of culture--or be of that culture--to understand that,” Barnes said.

In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony welcomed the new bishop by noting that the San Bernardino Diocese “had to face the enormous challenges of serving so many new Catholics with few priests and with church buildings far too small for today’s congregations.” He said Barnes “brings a fresh enthusiasm and vigor to one of the fastest-growing dioceses in the country.”

Barnes was born in Phoenix and moved with his family to East Los Angeles as a young child. He continued to live there through his graduation from Cal State L.A. in 1967.

As a young Catholic, he said, he wondered whether the church was meeting the needs of its Latino faithful.

Noting that he was a product of the “Hispanic mecca” of East Los Angeles, he said: “I saw the religiosity of these people and felt something had to be done for them. They remained poor and uneducated, and . . . I questioned whether the church could be doing even more to help them. And when I questioned that, one of my uncles said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ ”

Before joining the seminary, Barnes spent a year as a student teacher at Garfield and Wilson high schools in Los Angeles, but he soured on the experience.

“I was frustrated because before I could teach civics I first had to teach a lot of these students how to read,” he said.

He entered the seminary instead, was ordained in San Antonio and was given two different parish priest assignments before taking charge of the archdiocese’s religious education programs.

Later, he was named director of clergy development for the Archdiocese of San Antonio and appointed rector of Assumption Seminary in that city. In 1992, he was named auxiliary bishop of San Bernardino--a move that, he said, has allowed him to spend most of his free time with his extended family in Los Angeles after years of absence.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: The Most Rev. Gerald R. Barnes

On Thursday, Barnes was named the new bishop of the Diocese of San Bernardino, which spans San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

* Born: June 22, 1945

* Residence: Born in Phoenix, raised in East Los Angeles and reassigned to San Bernardino--where he now lives--three years ago.

* Education: Theodore Roosevelt High School, Los Angeles; Cal State Los Angeles, bachelor’s in political science, 1967; Holy Family Seminary, Overland, Mo., 1968-69; St. Leonard College, Dayton, Ohio, master’s in divinity, 1974.

* Career highlights: Parish priest in San Antonio, 1975-80; director of the San Antonio Archdiocese’s catechetical center, 1980-85; director of clergy development for the archdiocese, 1985-87; rector at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, 1987-92; auxiliary bishop, Diocese of San Bernardino, 1992-95.

* Interests: Attending sporting events--including Dodger games--with his family, most of whom still live in East Los Angeles.

* Quote: “I sleep well at night because I say a prayer, to give all my problems over to God. In the morning, he gives them back to me.”