Wave of Change Hits Historic East L.A. Church

No one at Our Lady of Solitude Church believed this day would come.

For 69 years, the Claretian Missionary priests led the East Los Angeles church known as La Soledad through every rite of life from baptism to marriage to burial.

Behind Soledad’s stained-glass windows in the late 1970s, the defiant pastor, Father Luis Olivares, founded the United Neighborhood Organization, or UNO, a church-based activist group that transformed the poor Latino congregation into one of the most influential Catholic communities in the city.

Now, a severe shortage of priests is forcing the Claretians to leave La Soledad and turn the historic church over to another religious order--one from Mexico.

Today, during a noon Mass celebrated by the Most Rev. Gabino Zavala, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, the transition ceremony from the Claretians to the Missionary Servants of the Word will take place.

Under the leadership of the Claretians, La Soledad played a major role in the history of Latinos in California. Here, in the church basement, Cesar Chavez and members of the farm worker movement gathered with the Claretians and raised their hands in prayer, asking God for help in their struggle.

In the 1980s, the Claretians, a religious order committed to social justice and ministry to the poor, focused on the scourge of drugs and gang violence, forming social service programs for neighborhood youths.

By contrast, the Missionary Servants, one of a number of Latin American religious orders that are taking over management of U.S. churches, are considered to be a more conservative order focused on evangelization.

Those cultural and political factors have made the impending change traumatic for many of the church’s 700 families, who have reacted with shock, anger, disbelief and sadness. Their feelings are echoed by Soledad’s last Claretian pastor, Father Richard Estrada.

Last week, the usually upbeat priest could hold back no more. “There’s a lot of love here,” he said, wiping tears from under his glasses. “When you leave, a piece of your heart always stays, and that hurts. It hurts me.”

Humberto Ramos, associate director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s office of Hispanic ministry, said a profound change is taking place in the church because of the priest shortage and the influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. Latino Catholics now number about 24 million, and Ramos said the church is having trouble keeping up.

“This is about demographics and the fact that the religious orders are dying out,” Ramos said.

Nationwide, church officials estimated in 1998 that the average age of a Catholic priest was 58 and rising steadily as fewer young men enter seminaries. In some dioceses, the shortage has required churches to be closed. The Los Angeles Archdiocese, the nation’s largest, has fewer priests than it did a generation ago, when the Catholic population was much smaller.

In addition to parish priests, the shortage has hit all the major religious orders such as the Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans. The situation has been particularly difficult for the Claretians, a smaller order to begin with. The Claretians now have only about 2,000 priests worldwide; 126 of those are in the United States. The average age of Claretian priests is 64, said Father Ralph Berg, provincial superior of the Claretian missionaries for the western region.

Faced with the inexorable aging of their members, the Claretians decided they could no longer run three full-time parishes in Los Angeles--La Soledad, Our Lady Queen of Angels, known as La Placita, and the San Gabriel Mission.

“Any time an order of priests leaves a church, it is a painful thing. It was a difficult decision. I don’t feel very good about it. Yet, we can only do so much,” said Berg.

Explosion of New Orders

By contrast, in the last few years, Mexico has had an explosion in the number of new religious orders created, and they are growing, said Ramos.

“More churches in the United States are turning to them because they are the ones able to provide priests,” he said. With the arrival of the priests from the Missionary Servants at La Soledad, six orders from Mexico will be running parishes in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Ramos said several other Mexican orders serve in cities with a lot of Latino Catholics, but the exact number across the country could not be ascertained. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington has begun talking about starting a regional seminary in Latin America that would specifically train priests to come to the United States.

The process by which an order from a foreign country enters the United States begins when the bishop of a region sends out letters of invitation. In the case of La Soledad, several letters from Cardinal Roger M. Mahony were sent throughout Latin America. The Missionary Servants were the first to respond. After an interview with Mahony, the decision was approved.

While the new priests will have the Spanish language skills that are in short supply among the American clergy and will share a common Mexican heritage with many of their new parishioners, many at La Soledad fear the church may be underestimating the gap between Mexican priests and Mexican American Catholics.

“What is the mentality of these priests? Will they be willing to adapt? Will they be willing to listen to people?” asked Rudy Magdaleno, a Soledad parishioner. “Schools are a big concern for people here. What will they be doing about that?”

Even after the decision was announced that the Claretians would leave the East Los Angeles church, one church official wondered whether having a conservative Mexican order in charge of an activist church like La Soledad would create too much tension.

La Soledad is the first parish in the United States that will be run by the Missionary Servants of the Word. Two priests from the order, Father Gilberto Torres and Father Genaro Guzman, arrived in Los Angeles in September and have been living at a nearby parish and learning English.

Father Torres said his order has no immediate plans for how it will lead the church. But he emphasized that the primary mission of the order is evangelization.

“We are going to continue working and spreading the word of God, especially to those who have strayed from the church,” Torres said.

People in the neighborhood still recall the glory days of La Soledad, when Father Luis Olivares helped found UNO, the first time a community organization had drawn its strength from a church congregation. UNO scored victories in a campaign to reduce discriminatory auto insurance rates on the Eastside and to seek evaluations of school principal performance.

Recounting this legacy, one church official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that the Mexican order be assigned to a more traditional parish in Los Angeles, and that the priests replaced by the Mexican order be moved to Soledad. The Claretian Provincial Council rejected that idea.

“I think the decision was made in haste. It seems like the first religious order that expressed interest in going to Soledad was picked. The match could have been better and the tension wouldn’t have been as great,” the official said.

But Father Estrada, who has had several conversations with the two Mexican priests who will be replacing him and his fellow Claretians, Father Theo Fuentes and Father Arcadio Martin, says he believes the church will survive the transition.

“People are scared, nervous and sad. But I am trying to tell them not to look at these new priests as the enemy. They have to look ahead to the future,” he said.

To ease the transition, three events were scheduled on consecutive Sundays this month as a send-off for the Claretians: dedication of a bell plaza, a Mass of thanksgiving and today’s ceremony in which the new priests will be welcomed with a key to the church.

Earlier this month at the plaza dedication, Sergio Perez, a longtime Soledad member, reminisced about how the Claretian priests had become an integral part of his life.

“The Claretians have been a part of my upbringing. They baptized me, they scolded me. They’re part of my family,” he said.

“I don’t even live in the neighborhood anymore,” added Perez, who now commutes to church with his family from Hacienda Heights. “Most of us who grew up here have moved away, but we come back to Soledad and mainly it’s because of the Claretians. That’s why people come back.”

Magdaleno added: “To us, they weren’t these holy priests. We looked to them as our brothers. They were people you could actually touch and feel. Sometimes they would come over to my house and have beers with my uncles.”

“Other times they would push us and say: ‘Get your butts out into the street and do something with your life.’ You would see the Claretians out there with drunks on the floor, trying to help them get their act together,” he said.

A Manual for the Future

Wary of the change, Perez and a group of Soledad parish leaders decided to prepare a manual for the new priests that includes the Soledad history, current church programs, useful names and numbers, and issues for the church’s future. Perez, a regional administrator for the Department of Motor Vehicles, said the manual, La Soledad 2000, was modeled on government publications prepared when a new administration takes office.

“The manual is to ensure the new administration respects what we have done and what we are planning to do. We don’t want anyone to all of a sudden say, ‘No, we’re not doing that anymore,’ ” Perez said.

At least some parishioners appear to be adjusting to the impending change. At a meeting in the Soledad rectory earlier this week when the new priests were introduced to the church leaders, Olga Quezada, the Parish Council secretary, showed some optimism and gave one of the new priests, Father Gilberto Torres, a high-five.

“I have no resentment. I know a lot of people still have resentment, but I don’t,” she said.

“It’s always known that priests never stay at one church, so we have to accept the Claretians leaving,” she said. “A priest is a priest. He is a representative of God and we should respect them as such.”