Faith and Purpose in the Twilight Years
The priests’ steps are slower than they used to be as they move around the historic Dominguez Adobe in Compton, which once served as their seminary when they were young men and now shelters them in retirement.
The peaceful setting offers a place to reflect after lives spent in poor communities around the country, building recreation centers, encouraging youth, lighting the fires of community activism--or simply listening to heavy hearts at confessions.
Some of the priests, like Father Celestino de la Iglesia, 94, bear the scars of battle. He was mugged and hit on the head near the Phoenix parish where he last served. Some have simply grown old and fragile, like Father Basilio Frisone, 86, who was once a legal advisor at the Vatican and is now going blind. The other priests help him move about. Father Bernard Stacy, who for years ministered to immigrants in the South Bay, died recently from cancer at 78.
The Claretian order--whose trademark is its activist work within Mexican American communities in such places as Los Angeles and Chicago--partly converted the adobe six years ago to a retirement facility for its increasing number of older priests.
In a “profession” that doesn’t feature 401(k) plans and in which some priests serve at their parishes well into their old age, retirement is a loosely defined concept.
“When you’re a priest, you die with your boots on,” says Father Pat McPolin, 83, who was instrumental in transforming the part of the historic adobe complex where many of its present residents attended seminary in the 1930s and ‘40s. “We decided to focus on a need: ‘What do we do with our elderly priests? Why do they have to be in a parish when they’re 80 years old?’ ”
While priests are priests all their lives, different religious orders and diocese priests have varying rules on the age of “retirement”--though usually well beyond the legal age of 65. Traditionally, retirement for many priests simply means a reduction in their parish work. Father John Aranz, for instance, died five years ago at 91 while still serving at La Soledad Church in East Los Angeles.
The rules also vary about where priests can retire from active parish work, said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Diocese priests have more options because they can plan for retirement individually using the modest salaries they have received during their parish work, and are allowed to live with relatives. Religious-order priests, however, take the vow of poverty in addition to those of chastity and obedience--meaning any earnings from their work go to the order, which in turn takes care of them. In retirement, the Claretian priests each receive a $210 monthly allowance from the order.
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With fewer and fewer young men entering the priesthood since the 1960s, the national average age for diocese priests is 59, and 63 for priests dedicated to an order, said Amy Bailey, research coordinator for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Today about 23% of all diocese priests are living in retirement, but no count is available for those in an order, Bailey said.
As working priests near retirement age en masse, the church could feel the pinch.
“People are living longer, and these are issues that are also going to affect the church,” Walsh agreed.
For the fathers at Dominguez, retirement just means a different way to carry on the Lord’s work.
“Part of the meaning of the priesthood is not only active work, but we believe very much in the power of priestly prayer,” said Father Robert Bishop, 59, the superior at the adobe. “And, of course, when you talk about the most personal meaning [of retirement], one has to begin thinking about the answer you’re going to give before God--and your reward.”
Indeed, the 15-acre facility with well-trimmed lawns and flower beds amid an industrial area just east of Carson is a pleasant place to reflect. Eighteen priests live there, sharing meals and masses with room enough to accommodate five more.
A Very Long and Storied History
Rancho Dominguez Adobe has seen many transformations, from the original home of Juan Jose Dominguez’s family--one of the pioneer families of Los Angeles in the late 1700s--to a seminary for the Claretians beginning in 1922, to a retreat center for teenagers in the 1970s and a base camp for priests who worked with the homeless, the poor and the sick in the 1980s.
Recognizing that retirement was a concern for his order, McPolin suggested that the adobe seminary be changed to living quarters.
Leading the adobe as its superior at the time, and having once been the order’s Western province superior, fund-raising had become one of his strengths. He’d amassed a Christmas-card list of 800 friends--and potential contributors--from the descendants of the Dominguez family and South Bay politicians, Hollywood celebrities and Mexican entertainers he met during his two decades in Chicago, where his first assignment began in 1943.
He raised $1.2 million to convert a portion of the adobe into living quarters.
McPolin has fond memories of his early career at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Chicago. There were nearly half a million Mexican immigrants living in the area at the time.
Working with youth was McPolin’s strength. He raised money for a community center and organized into clubs the “tough guys” who were getting into trouble in the streets. The young men were good at boxing. McPolin put together a team that won the city’s Golden Gloves championships and traveled to Madison Square Garden in New York to compete against the team from the East Coast.
“We came back winners,” says McPolin, an expressive Irishman.
He’s energized when he talks about such memories, particularly the people to whom he ministered, the Mexican people--like Matt Rodriguez, a former altar boy who went on to be Chicago’s chief of police for nearly two decades.
“My blood is Irish, but my heart is very much Mexican,” McPolin says.
And the feeling was reciprocated by the community. When he turned 70, more than 1,000 people from the Mexican American community in Chicago came to celebrate at a party there.
McPolin’s progressive work is reflective of other priests in the order: Since the turn of the last century, the Claretians have seen to the spiritual needs of Spanish-speaking communities around the country.
The order, started by St. Anthony Claret in Spain in 1849, has 2,000 priests worldwide, 126 in the United States.
A Refuge Complete With Spiritual Guides
To the few regular folks who come to Rancho Dominguez, the facility is a personal refuge--and the priests, spiritual guides.
Last year, Virgilius Kasper, a Redondo Beach photographer, visited for the first time.
“Who are these personalities?” Kasper thought. “Here we have dynamic, energetic individuals who have devoted their lives to education, to helping the poor, the infirm.”
A year later, Kasper still visits, along with colleagues, to meet his spiritual needs, partly through the Masses that the priests open up to whoever drops in, and partly through one-on-one chats with the priests.
“In the space of five minutes, they draw from their vast knowledge of theology, sociology, philosophy . . . to make sense of the confusion in the modern world,” Kasper says. “What gave me great strength is that when they found out my wife was sick, Father Pat went to see her.”
Another portion of the adobe is a museum of California history--housing artifacts from the early settlers of the 1700s--of which McPolin is a curator.
On the retirement side of the facility, a typical day begins with Mass at 8 a.m. followed by breakfast in the dining hall. The fathers have lunch and dinner together, but the rest of the day they busy themselves in their personal tasks.
Father Joe Daires, for example, passes his time translating Vatican materials into other languages, while Father Juan Corominas has taught Spanish for years at Cal State Dominguez Hills and Compton College. Others counsel young people.
Many of the fathers here reminisce about visiting the adobe as young men considering the priesthood--and embarking on the life-long commitment.
“I feel like I’m with my family,” says Father Donald Lavelle, 78. “I’ve known Father Pat since 1949 and Father [Sam] Bonano the same.”
They all share an early admiration of the priests in their church and an attraction to their work. “When you’re a kid and your dad’s a carpenter or a plumber, you hang around him and say, ‘This is something useful,’ ” McPolin says. Likewise, “the priests who were in our church were a good example.”
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Still, committing to the life was not an easy decision.
“There were times when I would think, ‘This is going to be too tough: A priest. All my life,’ ” remembers Bonano, 84. “We are not free from the ravages of original sin . . . but, ultimately, I opted fully for this kind of life.”
At the end, it was just as hard for Bonano to leave an active priestly life.
“That was a very difficult thing . . . all of a sudden there’s nobody calling you. [You think] ‘dig a grave and bury me,’ ” he said. “I went into a kind of depression--and came out of it. I got work around different parishes around here.”
Indeed, like Bonano, who still gives Mass at St. Athanasius Church in Long Beach, many of the priests here are called upon by area churches, for instance, when a pastor needs a vacation.
“A fellow didn’t like to give up his entire life of ministry; they thought they were going to be warehoused. We were going to let them work,” says McPolin, who in his personal work is involved in civic life.
“He’s been a spiritual advisor to me,” says Pete Fajardo, mayor of Carson, where McPolin often can be found giving convocations or listening to teenagers’ concerns at conferences.
Most of the aging priests don’t have much family of their own, their parents and most of their siblings have gone. They celebrate birthdays and holidays together. The church becomes their family.
As young men, they all accepted the calling from God--most of them here at Rancho Dominguez Adobe, where their lives have come full circle.
“I was called to the priesthood, and I’ve been happy all my life,” Lavelle said. “I have no regrets whatsoever.”
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Jose Cardenas can be reached at jose.cardenas@latimes.com.