A Belief So Deep, Priest Scandals Can’t Shake It

Even after the Roman Catholic Church’s clergy sex scandal hit home, even when her own parish priest was accused of molestation last month, Maria Lopez never doubted her faith.

How could she? Her entire life, she says, has been one long answered prayer.

Lopez, a 35-year-old electronics company supervisor in Azusa, says God has calmed her troubled marriage, miraculously provided every time her cash ran short, even sent an angel disguised as a woman to talk her out of suicide.

Her church friends, as dear to her as her own mother, have prayed with her through her illnesses, fed her family and cared for her children. On Saturday, she marched with them and 3,000 others through downtown Los Angeles in support of their faith. After Mass on Sunday, she gathered with a dozen others, clasping hands and offering fervent prayers for her church, the priests and all abuse victims.

The priests in her life have baptized her four children, blessed her home and counseled her through depression. Her own pastor, Father David Granadino of St. Frances of Rome in Azusa, is under investigation on allegations that he molested boys, but Lopez and her children say they know only his goodness.

Lopez’s life offers a glimpse into why the Catholic Church’s spiraling crisis is not likely to drive many devout Catholics away from their spiritual touchstone. Her faith, she says, is not rooted in a hierarchy of men, but in the redeeming and nourishing power of Jesus’ love. In the rhythms of weekly Mass, in the deep friendships forged, her faith is her life and her church is her family.

“Our faith is based on God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and not on a priest,” Lopez says. “Everybody is human; everybody falls at one time or another. As Christians, we should forgive. I am not someone to judge others.”

Lopez, a Mexico native, shares her testimony with an effervescent smile and a rapid, passionate stream of words. In hours of conversation about her faith, she never once mentioned Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Pope John Paul II or issues of dogma until asked about them.

Women’s ordination? Married priests?

“I never think about those things, to be honest,” Lopez says.

What informs her faith is apparent the minute you approach her four-bedroom, blue stucco home near the end of an Azusa cul-de-sac. Her front door is flanked by a prominent statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Inside her immaculately kept home, every room resembles a shrine, with statues of angels and doves, religious art and prayers mounted over doorways.

Lopez’s husband, Jorge, usually attends Mass on Friday mornings because his job as chef at a Glendale country club keeps him busy the rest of the week. Two of their children attend St. Frances school. Three of them won “altar servers of the year” last year and have honorary plaques and pictures of a church-sponsored Disneyland trip to show for it.

All of the children have faith testimonies too, though these must be prodded out of them by their beaming mother.

Jorge, 14, shyly noted that God had helped him boost his grades enough this year to finally realize his dream of playing on the school and city baseball teams. Anabely, 12, remembers the time she prayed the rosary and subsequently aced an exam. Fernando, 11, says God helped heal his grandfather, mother and cousins during times of illness.

Christian, 8, has no particular testimony, but volunteers that he was sad because he couldn’t make his first confession in March with Granadino, who has been removed from duty by the Los Angeles archdiocese pending results of the investigation. Church officials say the priest has “forcefully” denied the allegations.

“He’s the best priest, because he has the same [flattop] hair as mine,” Christian says.

The three oldest children, along with their parents, were interviewed by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy during Holy Week, says Lopez. They say the deputy asked the children how they liked being altar servers, whether they had ever heard of any problems involving Granadino or other priests.

Anabely says she reported two problems--one priest, not Granadino, once yelled at an altar server for failing to set up the chalice properly; another church official once kept a server after Mass until she learned to correct the mistake she had made during service.

But the Lopez family says that Father David, as they call him, had never hurt them, had always made them happy with jokes, compliments and a perennial smile. He asked about their classes, brought in pizza for the altar server meetings and arranged the Disneyland trips. Last June, he came by to bless the new family pool--another gift from God, Lopez says, made possible by a home refinance that dropped their monthly mortgage payments by $400.

Anabely says Father David always gave homilies that even children could understand. She remembers the time he talked about how his tough Air Force experiences had taught him not to complain and to be grateful for what he had.

“In a way, I don’t believe [the charges] because he’s so nice,” says Anabely, an honor roll student with brown hair and braces who, like her mother, wears a cross around her neck. “But anyway, I’m serving God. Father David is one priest; there are many others.”

For Lopez, the bonds of faith were not always so strong. She says her mother died when she was 5, and her father immigrated to California ahead of her and 12 siblings to work. Until she joined him in 1976 at the age of 9, she was raised by an older sister in Mexico who could not afford to send her to school and did not always bring her to Mass.

It was after she came to Pasadena and joined St. Andrew’s Church that she began to learn about her faith, she says. A church woman took her under her wing, taught her to pray and helped prepare her for first Holy Communion. A St. Andrew’s priest protected her from a local bully, telling her: “No one will ever touch you again. Do not be scared.”

After she and her husband married and bought their Azusa home 11 years ago, she had to take a full-time job. The dual burdens of work and family brought new strains. Lopez says she started drinking and partying. She started arguing with her husband, who felt she was neglecting the family.

Then, one day four years ago, things began to change. She says she decided to drive to the mountains and kill herself, but needed gas. While she was refueling, she says, an elderly woman came up to her, a total stranger. Lopez says the woman told her: Peace be with you. You have children who love you. Why are you thinking of killing yourself?

Lopez was shocked. “I believe she was an angel,” she says. “No one ever touched my heart like that.”

She says the brief encounter opened her for the first time to confronting the mistakes she had made in her life. Then she fell into clinical depression, began popping more than a dozen prescribed pills a day and finally went on disability leave. That’s when her church community rallied around her, sending groups to her home to pray and others to feed and watch her children.

One of them was Lupita Diaz, a woman who Lopez says has become the mother she barely had. Diaz marched with Lopez and her children in the rally Saturday, carrying signs--”Sigue a Cristo,” or Follow Christ--and singing exuberant hymns.

Diaz also threw a surprise birthday brunch for her in February, complete with her three favorite cakes (coconut, chocolate mousse and chocolate pineapple), and leaves messages on her voicemail: “Are you OK? I just want you to know I love you and Jesus loves you.”

Such friendships led Lopez to

join the church prayer group; her aith has become a central part of her life ever since.

Every time she climbs into her Dodge van, she makes the sign of the cross for safety. Every Friday, she prays the rosary and fasts for half the day. She attends “healing Masses” for others, and carries religious books with her constantly--titles like “Persevere Through God’s Love.” She reads them during her children’s baseball practice and other moments of down time.

And Lopez returns the charity she has received. She doesn’t always have much to spare; her own family has no savings and struggles to make ends meet each week on a $4,000 monthly income.

But what she has, she shares: sandwiches for the two hungry men who knocked on her door one day asking for help; a bag of food for the 15-year-old who just lost his father; a dollar last Sunday to the new family from Mexico who came to church hungry and homeless.

Her biggest personal project each year is a food and toy drive for an orphanage in Tijuana. Throughout the year, she buys toiletries and small gifts, asks family and friends to donate what they can. Last year, she was running short when her husband volunteered $200 of his year-end bonus to help out. The family travels to the orphanage every Christmas season to cook for the children, play with them and bring them presents.

Such acts embody the Lopez family’s life of faith: “to love God and love others,” she says.

“Whatever happens, I am proud of my religion,” Lopez says. “I follow my God and I follow Jesus. This will not change just because of what’s going on.”