Service Will Recall Fiery, Inspirational L.A. Priest

Father Luis Olivares didn’t start out being a radical, controversial priest. He just turned out that way, influenced by the state of affairs in Los Angeles and the world around him.

In the early 1990s, he had a quick answer for those bad-mouthing him for his support of illegal immigrants at a time when some were pushing for the passage of the anti-illegal immigrant measure Proposition 187.

“What if that person is Jesus and I turn him away?” he’d asked. “How could I do that?”

It’s been 10 years since the onetime pastor of the largest congregation in the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese died from AIDS complications at 59. On Monday, an ecumenical memorial service will be held at 6 p.m. at his old parish at La Placita Church near downtown.

Civil rights activists and labor organizers mentored or inspired by Olivares will attend the services. Among them are retired Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Arzube, who led the church’s outreach to Latinos; Father Greg Boyle, the Jesuit priest who rehabilitates Eastside street gang members; the Rev. James Lawson, a longtime peace activist; Rabbi Leonard I. Beerma, the founding rabbi of the Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles; Miguel Contreras, head of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor; Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles; and actors Martin Sheen and Ed Begley Jr. The priest’s older brother, Henry, a retired schoolteacher, is scheduled to speak. Videos and recordings of Olivares’ speeches will be part of the service.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has been invited to attend despite the rocky relationship he had with Olivares at the time of his death in 1993. The archbishop did not attend the funeral Mass for Olivares, which some took as a sign of Mahony’s displeasure with the priest. Mahony’s spokesman said the cardinal is checking his schedule.

“They did have a strained relationship at the end, but he is invited,” said Father Richard Estrada, who worked under Olivares at La Placita and Our Lady of Solitude Church in East Los Angeles. He now heads Jovenes Inc., a nonprofit organization for homeless immigrant teenagers.

Organizers said the service will note how those who worked for Olivares have come into their own as leaders and how Latinos and others got access to services and power. Lydia Lopez, an Eastside activist who works for the Episcopal diocese in Los Angeles, said Latinos have become a political force within organized labor because of Contreras. “It wasn’t that way before,” said Lopez, who worked with Olivares in the 1970s.

Friends say Olivares is especially missed these days because he would be a strong voice against the U.S.-led war against Iraq. “He’d be opposed to the war,” Estrada said. “He’d link it to the domestic cost of the war, like the closing of hospitals and schools. His would be a clear voice, speaking out.”

The priest’s memory also is kept alive through the Luis Olivares Legacy, a nonprofit foundation that helps the poor by giving financial aid to groups that help immigrant children and expand the rights of undocumented immigrants.

In addition, Estrada hopes to open this year a home in Boyle Heights as a shelter for homeless immigrant men, ages 16 to 22. It will be named after Olivares.

Born in San Antonio in 1934 to Mexican immigrants, at 13 Olivares joined a seminary in Compton. By his own account, he did not have an activist streak in him as a young priest. He earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Notre Dame and rose in the hierarchy of the church’s Claretian order.

He developed a taste for expensive clothes, and declined to join a protest by fellow church workers against the Vietnam War. But his life changed after meeting Cesar Chavez, the legendary leader of the United Farm Workers union, in the early 1970s. After that, he dedicated his life to fighting injustice. “You cannot be witness to the human suffering and not be convinced of the existence of social sin,” he told The Times in 1986. “We are all responsible unless we take a stand and speak against it.”

As pastor at Solitude Church, he encouraged parishioners to organize what later became the United Neighborhoods Organization, a grass-roots group that continues to fight for affordable low-income housing, better police protection, lower insurance and other things.

He became a force within the group, which attracted attention in its beginning because of its in-your-face confrontations with politicians. Once, after a contentious public meeting attended by a throng of UNO members and supporters, one Los Angeles City Hall insider was heard to mutter, “That priest has too much power.”

After becoming the pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in 1981, which is called La Placita or the “Little Plaza,” Olivares spoke out against military aid to El Salvador during that country’s civil war.

He also declared the church a sanctuary for Central American refugees facing deportation. That enraged some public officials, including Harold Ezell, then the Western regional commissioner for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who routinely branded Olivares a communist.

The outspoken priest became such a lightning rod for controversy that his long-standing friendship with Mahony soured. Friends of Olivares, including Estrada, recalled some heated telephone calls between the priest and archbishop.

He left his post at La Placita and kept up his humanitarian work. On a visit to a refugee camp along the El Salvador-Honduras border, Olivares, a diabetic, was infected with HIV because of the use of improperly sterilized syringes.

He died March 18, 1993, at a Los Angeles hospital.

At the recent lunch in Echo Park, Estrada and Lopez swapped stories of how Olivares spent his free time going to the movies and shopping at malls.

“That Louie,” Lopez sighed, “he was something.”