Pope Names Valley-Area Bishop to Top El Paso Diocese Position

The Vatican announced Monday that a Mission Hills-based bishop, an auxiliary bishop of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese for more than nine years, has been named bishop of El Paso--and that’s no April Fools’ joke, the prelate says.

“I am quite sure you are wondering . . . Is this one big April Fools’ joke or what?” was the opening line of the brief statement left behind by the Most Rev. Armando X. Ochoa when he went to Texas over the weekend to confer with leaders of the 517,000-member diocese there.

Not only was Monday the day to beware of jokesters, but the knowledgeable are aware that Pope John Paul II customarily announces new assignments for bishops on Tuesdays.

Given that, Ochoa said, members of the 48 parishes he has overseen in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys might wonder if a church bureaucrat in Rome was pulling off an uncharacteristic prank.

Actually, a church spokesman said, the Vatican announcement was moved ahead to Monday from Tuesday because the annual Chrism Mass, at which more than 1,000 priests and auxiliary bishops pledge their loyalty to the bishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, was being held Monday night in Encino.

“Priests would have wondered where Bishop Ochoa was, and no one who knew would be able to say anything if the Vatican were going to announce the appointment on Tuesday morning,” explained Father Gregory Coiro, media relations director for the archdiocese.

Ochoa, who turns 53 on April 9, told a news conference in El Paso on Monday that he had never previously visited the city on the Mexican border. Ochoa’s territory will include not only El Paso but also most of western Texas.

With a Catholic population that is 85% Latino, Ochoa said that problems associated with legal and illegal immigration will be a challenge for the church, according to Maria Miranda, editor of the diocese’s newspaper. The Catholic Church has been sympathetic to the plight of migrants in a period of growing public and political opposition to providing government-paid social services to illegal immigrant families.

Cardinal Mahony predicted that Bishop Ochoa’s talents “will endear him quickly” to people in the El Paso diocese.

“A Mexican American fluent in Spanish, he will relate well to the sizable Hispanic population of El Paso,” Mahony said.

Born and raised in Oxnard, Ochoa attended Ventura College for one year before entering St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1970. He served a succession of three parishes in Los Angeles as an associate pastor and co-directed the archdiocese’s program of permanent deacons.

Ochoa was named administrator of Sacred Heart parish in Lincoln Heights at the end of 1984, and its pastor in March, 1986. Four months later he was appointed director of the archdiocese’s office for ethnic ministries and by December 1986, was named an auxiliary, or assistant, bishop in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, which embraces Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, has 3.6 million Catholics. In 1987 it was divided into five pastoral regions, with Ochoa assigned to the San Fernando region.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake forced nine of the region’s parishes out of their damaged churches and into fellowship halls or temporary structures. Some other Valley parishes later vacated their churches for months at a time while repairs and renovations were made.

“There has been a silver lining to this,” Ochoa said in an earlier interview. “It really builds up a sense of community when people have the experience of attending Mass in makeshift quarters.”

Msgr. Gerald Wilkerson, pastor of Our Lady of Grace parish in Encino, where the Monday night Chrism Mass was held, called Ochoa “a very gentle man who has the good of people in mind and tries to understand their needs.

“He’s a people’s bishop in a lot of ways--easily approachable and very likable.”

Ochoa, who will return shortly to the Valley for Holy Week services, said he expected to move to El Paso in mid-June.

The El Paso post has been vacant since last July when Bishop Raymundo J. Pena was assigned to the Brownsville, Texas, diocese.