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Archbishops of Los Angeles Jose H. Gomez and the late Pope Francis took on their position two years apart.
Both were pioneering Latinos. Gomez became the first Mexican-born head of the largest US archdiocese in the United States in 2011, and Francis became the first clergyman from the Americas in 2013.
Both were subject to inherited confusion left behind by their predecessors – Gomez had to close out his La See after decades of sexual abuse scandal under Cardinal Roger Mahoney, and Francis had to find a way to rule in the shadows of King Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign for nearly 600 years.
Each came from a religious movement that has long been a controversial in the Catholic world. It’s the conservative Opus Day of Francis’ progressive Jesuits and Gomez. They both earned praise for their hard work in serving from blue-collar cities. So Catholics around the world crowned them in the hopes of warmly welcoming them and making history.
After his death the day after Easter at 88, Francis was welcomed by Catholics and others to abandon egoism and materialism in favor of a kinder and more tolerant world focusing on the alienated above all else.
According to Vatican figures, Jorge Mario Bergoglio oversaw a church that grew from 1.3 billion to 1.3 billion Catholics. His governance was not perfect, and his liberal beliefs opposed Catholics who were conservative enough to have emerged in the United States, with their own conferences, private schools and publications. Nevertheless, history remembers Francis being the resultant Pope.
In a statement after Francis’ death, Archbishop Gomez prayed that Catholics would recall the Pope’s call to “an emergency work that is not yet finished.”
It’s a great feeling and I hope Gomez really keeps it in his heart.
In an area where the Dodgers produced influential Catholic church members in the way they drove away this year’s rookies, Gomez is now living the equivalent of a hair shirt.
Los Angeles has changed strongly since Gomez began here 14 years ago. The poor became poor, and the rich retreated to their camera-secured homes. Corruption is infectious with physical politics, leaving a crack in local leadership where someone is desperate to fulfill. Over the past five years, Angelenos has weathered the ghosts of Covid, City Hall audio leak scandals, the fires of Pallisard and Eton, and now tariffs and immigrant raids, as they destroy cities around the world.
But Gomez has urged His flock to live a contemplative life in the name of Jesus, Mary and Saints. It violates the witnesses practiced not only by Francis, but by many of the Lacusdiosese itself.
A photograph of Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell is located near the entrance to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in 2023. O’Connell was shot with a gun at his Hacienda Heights home.
(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)
Here, Father Louis Olivares rebelled against church and government officials in the 1980s to make the Church of Rapsita a sanctuary for Central American refugees. Father Gregory Boyle created the Homeboy Industry to bring dignity and meaning to the lives of former gang members. Since the 1980s, Father John Moretta has advised parishioners at the Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights on issues that plagued their neighborhoods.
One of Gomez’s own auxiliary bishops, the late David O’Connell, fights environmental racism on behalf of the black parish people of South Los Angeles, surprises hotel workers, and prays with parishioners outside the planning custody clinic. Members of Catholic Workers offer free meals at Skid Row.
When I consider these examples and more, I think of Pope Francis. I don’t think of Gomez – that’s a shame.
There was a time when the archbishop seemed to be as if he were to work in that realm of bliss. In 2013 he released a book entitled “Immigration and the Next America,” advocating comprehensive immigration reform and the values of all who come to this country. Like in 2020, Our Lady of the Angels’ Cathedral rang the bell in memory of George Floyd, but Gomez used his usual letters to denounce racism as “a blasphemous against God” and “urged him to root out racial injustice that infects too many areas of American society.”
But as LA became more progressive, Gomez retreated to his conservatism.
During his three years as the first Latino head of the Catholic Bishop’s American Congress, Gomez pursued nonsense of culture wars rather than real issues. When liberal and lifelong Catholic Joe Biden took office as president, the archbishop wrote a letter accusing him of planning to “advance moral evils” such as gay marriage, abortion rights and employer-funded birth control.
That same year, Gomez traveled to Spain and gave audio that destroyed the “awakening” culture. Two years later, when the Dodgers praised their charity, honored drug groups that were nuns habits, Gomez held what he described as a mass of “healing” equivalent to exorcism attempts on behalf of the entire city.
Of all the reasons Gomez might have made a memorial service in the City of Angels, was this that?
As Cardinals meet at the Vatican in the coming weeks, Francis’ successor Gomez, who is merely an archbishop, will elect to stay at home. He was about two years ago to send the next Pope the necessary resignation letter to all bishops and cardinals when he turns 75.
To Archbishop Gomez, I say: I repent of your overwhelming tenure. Find inspiration from the passage of Papa Francisco. While you still have time, give LA the successor it needs.
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