Room for All at Antiwar Church

A placard outside Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights announced “NO WAR” to all who entered its humble sanctuary Sunday. The weekly bulletin included a flier for a “Stop the War” rally and an article featuring Pastor Michael Kennedy declaring his antiwar stance.

Inside, a homemade memorial asked the Virgin de Guadalupe to “give peace to our sons, protect our brothers, sisters and friends” and listed nine pages of parishioners or their relatives at war in Iraq.

This little Catholic church with an antiwar pastor, a parish whose members have long devoted themselves to stopping violence in their own streets, is the spiritual home to at least 140 families with relatives in combat.

And since the night the United States began dropping bombs on Iraq, parishioners have been immersed in reconciling their support for the troops with their abhorrence of violence. What has emerged from their quandary is a unified prayer for peace.

“There is a lot of pain and anguish among us,” said Kennedy, who has been among the protesters speaking at weekly antiwar rallies at the downtown Los Angeles Federal Building. “I think, innately, people of faith believe that God is a God of nonviolence. They innately know that violence breeds violence.”

Margarita Hernandez, whose 26-year-old son, Sergio Hernandez, is an Army serviceman fighting in Iraq, clasped her hands over her head in tearful prayers for her son during Mass Sunday. She, like other parishioners, said she feels no tension with their activist pastor and no animosity toward him.

“I feel comfortable inside this church, I know we are all praying for peace,” said Hernandez, 46, who wore a small yellow ribbon on her sweater. She said Kennedy’s preaching has taught her that the victims of war “are innocent people.... They don’t deserve to be hurt.”

Yet her private prayers are focused on her son, a Roosevelt High School graduate with a wife and a 1-year-old daughter who are in North Carolina. She finds support from her friends in the parish, who crowd into her home to recite the Rosary so “that all our soldiers return safely.”

“My son enlisted in the Army to better himself, to get an education,” she said. “I’m not sure he thought he would be fighting a war. But now he is devoted to his military career.”

Kennedy refuses to tiptoe around his beliefs, but looks for ways to impart his antiwar passions while showing compassion for so many of his parishioners who are wracked with war anxiety.

“Once you begin a war, everyone becomes polarized,” he said. “If you say the war is unjust, then you are anti-patriotic. I refuse to fall into this. I will not be silenced.”

So alongside the photos of their sons and daughters in military uniform that his parishioners have laid at the altar, Kennedy has placed color photos of injured Iraqi children and civilians.

“We must pray that the Virgin of Guadalupe protects our sons and pray for the children and the people of Iraq,” he said at Mass.

He had blessed a box of Rosary beads at an antiwar rally and then distributed them to 12 relatives and friends of soldiers who came forward Sunday for special blessing. After 7:30 a.m. Mass, a young Marine awaiting deployment and his girlfriend went up to Kennedy and asked for a blessing.

“I said to him, ‘I bet you’re glad you’re not there yet,’ ” Kennedy said. “And he said, ‘Oh no, I’m ready to fight.’ ” The priest then talked to the girlfriend, who was upset over the Marine’s departure. So he said a prayer for both of them and told the Marine not to forget the worry his family will feel once he is in Iraq.

To fill the strong need for comfort among parishioners with relatives at war, Dolores Mission holds weekly, standing-room-only prayer vigils for the troops.

And in other meetings, parishioners feel free to discuss their antiwar beliefs. After a church leadership gathering on how to best observe the Lenten season, four groups all decided that they must grapple with issues of war and peace.

“I was in shock that everyone came up with the same thing,” Kennedy said, because members of this largely poor, Latino parish typically focus on community work. The parish is rooted in neighborhood activism and has long been devoted to anti-gang programs and after-school programs.

Kennedy leads prayer and meditation sessions for youths in Central Juvenile Hall and with neighborhood women whose lives have been scarred by wife-beatings and drive-by shootings. The church offers refuge to about 50 homeless men, who sleep on its pews each night. More than 200 families are given food each week from the parish pantry.

“People know that this is a church of acceptance,” said parishioner Carlos Ortez, 40. “We know we can be comfortable taking a position, even an unpopular one.”

Ortez and others said many who attend Dolores Mission are Salvadoran immigrants who fled their own war-torn country. They see the pain in the eyes of injured Iraqi civilians and recall their own past.

“We all know what war is. We lived it,” Ortez said. “The prayers for peace you are hearing are from people who have been victims of war.”

Mario Fuentes, a parishioner who is also the church’s community organizer, said that after watching the news and hearing the explosions, he has flashbacks to Feb. 27, 1977. That’s when he, his father and his uncle faced a military firing squad in San Salvador after participating in a labor rally. As they ran away and escaped, he said, the military fired shots from behind.

“The pain of war that so many of us feel is very close to the surface,” Fuentes said. That’s a reason why, he said, a parishioner with a loved one at war does not take offense at their pastor’s antiwar activism.

Elizabeth Torres, 28, knows she has found a safe place to express her feelings, even though they are at odds with her pastor’s.

“I can’t be against the war,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “My close friend is there. He’s Marine Sgt. Mario Partida.” Yet she was among those who stood before Kennedy and the congregation Sunday and accepted their blessings as she added her friend’s name to the long list of Dolores Mission soldiers.

“It helps a lot to be here,” she said. “Everyone feels at ease. We come together and pray for peace.”