Nazareth House resident Nadine Calliguiri is pictured outside her room at the San Rafael Catholic care facility, which announced on October 27 that it will close in 2021, in part due to staffing problems that have worsened due to the coronavirus pandemic. Calliguiri, 82, of San Francisco founded Handicapables, an adult nonprofit service. (Photo by Christina Gray / San Francisco Catholic)

November 10, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco

After caring for Bay Area seniors, including dozens of priests from the Archdiocese of San Francisco, for nearly 60 years, the Sisters of Nazareth are closing the doors of the Nazareth home in San Rafael.

Surprised residents, families, and staff learned from community leaders on October 27 that the Marin County facility – one of the Order’s four supervised care facilities in California – is down and will be closed in early 2021.

A press release released on the same day said the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a fatal blow to Nazareth House, which has not been able to accept new residents for eight months.

“As with so many affected by the global pandemic, Nazareth House simply cannot sustain the financial, human and health challenges of the current circumstances,” said Barbara Ann Crowley, community executive director.

Sisters of Nazareth American Superior Sister Rose Hoye, CSN, told Catholic San Francisco on November 4th that the closure of the Nazareth House in San Rafael was not something for the sisters or their board of directors.

“It took us a long time to make this decision,” she says. “Even if it sounds like a quick decision, it wasn’t.”

The same staffing issues that other Marin County companies are facing became “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Sister Hoye this year amid the pandemic.

The Sisters of Nazareth own and operate four Nazareth House locations in California: Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Rafael. Only the latter closes.

The lack of affordable housing in or even near Marin County was not an issue when the Sisters of Nazareth opened the San Rafael facility in 1962, she said. However, over the past 20 years it has become a critical barrier to finding and retaining skilled workers.

Nazareth House employs more than 75 nurses, home nurses, catering staff, maintenance workers, and others who cannot afford to live where the average home rents at $ 2,700 a month.

“It has always been a challenge, but when the coronavirus hit, a challenge turned into a crisis,” said Sister Hoye.

Employees came from Vallejo or Richmond or further to work in relatively low-paying jobs. Those who lived in San Rafael typically lived in the low-income Canal neighborhood that became the hotbed of the Marin County’s virus case.

Sister Hoye confirmed that there had been a coronavirus outbreak in the building that year but declined to elaborate.

During a visit to the facility, which is approved for up to 125 residents, the Catholic San Francisco noticed the number of obviously unoccupied rooms that bordered a beautiful courtyard.

“We haven’t been able to take pictures since March,” said Sister Hoye. “That is not financially viable.”

Nazareth House just completed a $ 3.5 million renovation project of the nursing ward and added a new roof, she said. Another major home fitout renovation project in the planning stages was drawn when the sisters saw where the journey was going.

Sister Hoye said the response to the closure announcement was “a great sadness” from residents and staff.

“We are very sad ourselves,” she said. “It’s a tragic, tragic decision that we have to make.”

Crowley said the sisters will work with each resident to help them transition into a new community.

The San Franciscan Nadine Calliguiri, 82, moved to Nazareth House seven years ago.

“I was happy here from the first day I moved here,” said Calliguiri, who was born with cerebral palsy and started Handicapables, a nearly 60-year-old Catholic ministry for adults with disabilities. “Here you can feel the joy of the Holy Spirit,” she said.

The San Francisco Chapter of the now national organization is now run by Catholic charities and was renamed Breaking Bread with Hope earlier this year.

Calliguiri said she has friends who will help her find an apartment, hopefully in Petaluma, but added, “I’m not sure where I’m going.”

Claire Miller volunteered at Nazareth House for 15 years before moving there with her late husband Don three years ago.

“This peaceful and joyful home gave us a home to be together in during the final days of his journey here on earth,” she said. “I felt safe and supported when I needed it most.”

Nazareth House has been favored by many retired priests, and its closure will leave a void for the future, said Rachel Avelais, care manager for retired and aging priests for the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

She said the community of priests who live in the house of Nazareth grew a few years ago after some priests chose to live there.

“For many years there was quite a group there with their own table to gather at for dinner,” Alvelais told San Francisco Catholic. “The community that arose there became an attraction in its own right.”

Past residents include the late Father Ray Zohlen, former pastor of St. James and St. Raymond Parishes, the late Father Kirk Ullery, former pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in San Francisco, and Father Bernie Brennan and Father Kevin Gaffey, both pastors from several parishes in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and now deceased.

Archbishop of San Francisco, George H. Niederauer, lived at Nazareth House before his death in 2017, aged 80. According to Avelais, only three priests currently live there.

The “full Catholic” living environment of Nazareth House with its high levels of community and care will not be easy to replace, she said. The closure “further restricts our choices” for priests, certainly, but for all residents who appreciated it.

“People will have to make more compromises,” she said, including leaving the area or swapping a Catholic-run congregation for a secular, nonprofit or for-profit organization.

Sister Hoye said that despite the losses that are not easy to replace, the sisters believe they made the right decision.

“We believe that God is in that choice and that our mission never dies, just takes a turn,” she said.

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The cover of the first issue of Catholic San Francisco, February 12, 1999. (Archived from Catholic San Francisco at catholic-sf.org)

June 14, 2021
Catholic staff in San Francisco

In 1858, Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany OP, the first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (1853-1884), founded his first newspaper, The Monitor, and recognized the importance of communicating directly with devout Catholics through the church’s own media. Under the leadership of Archbishop Alemany, a Dominican and Spaniard who was an American citizen, the Archdiocese of San Francisco built an extensive system of schools, orphanages, hospitals and retirement homes and other charities.

Founded just five years after Archbishop Alemany’s arrival in California, The Monitor was committed, reporting, and conveying the faith and important issues to believers for nearly 130 years. Today, as the San Francisco Catholic newspaper moves into a magazine and increases its awareness of digital media, the commitment to connect with and guide the people of the Archdiocese continues.

“This is a tradition that goes back to the very beginning of this archdiocese – the desire to communicate directly to believers in the most effective medium of the day,” said Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. “The new magazine will offer top texts, great graphics and photos as well as opportunities to promote the faith of the people of the archdiocese.”

“If the past year has taught us anything, it is that today’s shepherds must find new ways to communicate with their flock,” said Archbishop Cordileone, emphasizing the Archdiocese’s commitment to the new magazine and digital communication tools, E-letters, social media, and the website.

As the newspaper gives way to new forms of communication that best suit the current needs of the Church and the faithful, it leaves three crucial legacies as the newspaper that carried on the tradition of gifted writers and editors who became the Catholic media in the archdiocese since the 19th century.

Catholic San Francisco was created by everyone who worked on it: the newspaper’s five editors, Maurice Healy, Dan Morris Young, Patrick Joyce, Jack Smith and Rick DelVecchio, their collaborators and many thousands of loyal readers who had ideas and opinions for contributed more than two decades.

A record of local Catholic life

The local church leaders who founded the newspaper in 1999 understood their role in documenting local church history; the bishops and archbishops who helped define them, the people and events that shaped them, and the liturgical calendar that was all about.

In the first edition of Catholic San Francisco, published February 12, 1999, the former editor of The Monitor, which closed as a newspaper for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1984 after 126 years, welcomed the return of a local Catholic newspaper. (The monitor is available at sfarchdiocese.org/archives.)

“After the monitor was closed, not a single vehicle gave an overview of Catholic life in the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” wrote the late Father John A. Penebsky.

In 1995, then Archbishop William J. Levada, the seventh Archbishop of San Francisco, advocated the return of a newspaper because it could document “the pilgrimage that is the story of our salvation”.

“Our local Church is full of stories that will appear on these pages each week to deepen the bonds that unite us as faithful believers in the Word made flesh,” said then Auxiliary Bishop John C. Wester, now Archbishop of Santa Fe, in same opening edition.

Available in the San Francisco Catholic Archives at catholic-sf.org, the 22 year editions – 797 issues in total – are a time capsule of local Catholic life that is digitally preserved as a historical record. It represents a whole generation of liturgical events, priestly ordinations, anniversaries, school and community anniversaries, renovations, fundraising campaigns, chancellery events, service work, religious community projects, obituaries and more, always with the aim of conquering the loyal hearts of the people involved.

Tom Burke’s column, “On the Street Where You Live” was a popular page recap of little stories that included wedding anniversaries, local Catholic professional achievements, community picnics, and the like.

In a 2017 reader survey, respondents rated Burke’s Street column, which began with the newspaper’s first issue in 1999, as a popular feature. In the archdiocese, a freely designed photo page with unrelated snapshots turned out to be equally popular. The photos sent to staff by readers, sometimes grainy or blurry, nonetheless captured important moments for the local Catholics: a fundraiser from the Council of Knights of Columbus, school children returning to school in the fall, the annual meeting of one Religious community and more.

News from a Catholic point of view

As a newspaper, the editors of Catholic San Francisco treated news events – local, national, global, and in the Vatican – through a Catholic lens.

“One of my tenets was to get on the news,” said Maury Healy, the first associate editor of Catholic San Francisco to be appointed by Archbishop Levada. “And there is almost always a Catholic point of view.”

He named Dan Morris Young editor-in-chief of the weekly publication, which was mailed to registered community members.

“I always told the Archbishop that the newspaper was the ‘Catholic eye on the world and the eye on the local Catholic Church,'” Healy said.

For over 20 years, Catholic San Francisco covered the Catholic response to important news including the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the sexual abuse crisis in 2002 and 2003, the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and Hurricane Katrina 2005, Philippine Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, California forest fires in 2017 and 2018, and the coronavirus epidemic in 2020.

Catholic San Francisco covered and nurtured the first Walk for Life West Coast, held on January 22, 2005. The walk was condemned in advance by all city overseers and Mayor Gavin Newsom, who declared “Stand Up for Choice Day” and a counter-demonstration. Smith wrote the story and photographed this walk. Healy wrote on the pages of Catholic San Francisco under the heading “Shame of San Francisco” and wrote: “Thanks to the repulsive rhetoric of city officials and the rowdy behavior of several hundred abortion activists, San Francisco came a long way on January 1st. 22 to cement its reputation as one of the nation’s most intolerant cities. “

Healy’s editorials were in the tradition of Father Peter Yorke, a diocesan priest who was editor of The Monitor in the 1890s and who was on the forefront of defending Catholic interests against attacks by the American Protective Association. Father Yorke published a series of revelations about the APA, participated in public debates, and played a key role as a labor activist.

In the Teamsters strike of 1901, Yorke firmly sided with the working class with the Catholic Church of San Francisco and delivered passionate speeches to thousands of workers. He said, “As a priest, my duty is with the working people who fight for their rights, for that is the historical position of the priesthood and because that is the command of the Lord.”

Catholic San Francisco also documented the Church’s role in advocating for immigrants, treating immigration and affordable housing, visiting prisons, and conducting prayer services for those killed on the city streets.

Healy said the biggest story the paper covered in 2010 was a PG&E gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno.

Eight people were killed, including a Catholic school child and her mother. The cover picture of the September 17th issue showed a group of students from St. Cecilia School crying during a memorial service for a classmate and her mother who perished.

Reputation for excellence

From its inception to its very last days, the editors and staff of Catholic San Francisco received annual awards from the Catholic Press Association (now known as the Catholic Media Association).

The membership organization of Catholic media professionals from dioceses in the USA and Canada recognizes outstanding achievements in an annual prize competition. In its 22-year life, Catholic San Francisco received 76 separate (CMA) awards in its division and circulation categories, underscored by five general awards, including Editor of the Year for ex-Editor Rick DelVecchio in 2018 and two for Best Newspaper.

What’s next?

Catholic San Francisco will continue to offer news in a Friday e-letter sent to those who have already signed up for CSF’s digital newsletter, as well as those who sign up at sfarch.org/signup. Social media channels of the

Archdiocese and the website will also bring information. The new San Francisco Catholic Magazine (profile on pages 6-7) will be a pleasure to read and hold local ministry and people stories and combine with timeless stories and resources for faith and life.

A new adventure in communication begins – based on a foundation of quality and commitment to preaching Jesus Christ that spanned from the first issue of The Monitor in 1858 to two decades of the San Francisco Catholic newspaper. The commitment to preaching the gospel that began with the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ more than 2,000 years ago continues. As the Bible reminds us, the gospel must be proclaimed in due time and out of time (2 Tim 4: 2) knowing that Jesus Christ, regardless of medium, is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13, 8th). .

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During the COVID-19 pandemic in Athens, Greece on December 22, 2020, an elderly woman crosses a plaza to receive a free lunch from community social services. The Pontifical Academy for Life has published a document on the future after the pandemic for the elders. (CNS photo / Costas Baltas, Reuters)

February 9, 2021
Carol Glatz
Catholic intelligence service

VATICAN CITY – A new attitude and approach to the elderly is needed in today’s world, especially in the places and ways they are cared for as they become more fragile, said the Pontifical Academy for Life.

To ensure that the needs of older people are met and their gifts are valued, it is necessary to reconsider and find new solutions for assisted living facilities, architectural barriers, friendships and social support networks, home carers, families and younger family members, and assisted living opportunities. said the academy in a new document.

The 11-page “Note” published on February 9, is entitled “Old Age: Our Future. Older People Post-Pandemic” and was made available in six languages ​​on akademyforlife.va.

It provides a reflection on the importance of older people and the challenges the older generation faces and will face given the World Health Organization estimate that the world will have 2 billion people over 60 by 2050, i.e. one of them all five people in the world.

The Academy also appealed to all facets of society, including families, health care providers, city administrators, and local communities, to be more attentive to and inclusive of the elderly, and to review and rebuild the ways in which they welcome and care for people in their fragility .

During an online press conference where the document was unveiled on February 9, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the academy, said the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed chronic, fundamental problems in caring for the elderly.

“On every continent, the pandemic has mostly affected the elderly,” he said, citing estimates that more than 2.3 million elderly people have died of COVID-19, most of whom were over 75 years old.

The pandemic “was a real massacre of the elderly, and most of them died in facilities for the elderly,” he said.

“Serious rethinking is required not only with respect to senior residences, but also for the entire care system for the numerous elderly people who characterize all societies today,” he said.

Faced with a warning from Pope Francis that the world will either come out better or worse out of the pandemic, the Archbishop said that “how we begin building our future today is up to us”.

The document, which focuses on building a new future for the elderly, was the fourth to be released by the academy on the pandemic, and two more are in the works: one on children and one on the disabled, he said.

Msgr. Bruno-Marie Duffe, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said at the press conference that the pandemic “has brought to light an important part of social relationships”.

“The ability to face life’s challenges – its strangers and its joys – is based in part on the inspiration of intergenerational dialogue,” in which they come together and encourage one another and share their dreams, wisdom and tenderness, he said.

Etsuo Akiba, an academician and professor at the University of Toyama, Japan, said 98% of the people in Japan who have died from COVID-19 were people who were 60 years old and older.

At the conference from Japan, she described the serious social and psychological difficulties that young people, especially students, face in urban settings. They face intense competition, bullying and seclusion, and the elderly often live far away in suburbs where many of them fear they will not be able to fend for themselves, she said.

However, she said Toyama Prefecture has tried to reject this generation separation and create a “regional mutual aid community”.

For example, she said, they are promoting the “Compact City Project” in collaboration with the university and landscaping.

They also have the Toyama Day Care System, which has become a national project where the elderly and children with disabilities live together in a traditional Japanese home designed for three generations, surrounded by nature and by family members and carers is supported. She said.

“The current world war against COVID-19 is a rare chance for us to escape the withdrawn mentality of an island country and get the cosmopolitan perspective,” which is healthier and more intergenerational, she added.

The most important points in the Academy’s document include:

– The duty to create the best conditions for older people to live “at home with lifelong friends if possible” and with the provision of basic services in their own neighborhood.

– Housing should adapt to changing needs, including removing architectural barriers and providing integrated, quality home health care.

– New technologies and advances in telemedicine and artificial intelligence should be used responsibly so that elderly people can receive support in the home environment.

– Independent living, assisted living, cohabitation and other initiatives should be inspired by an attitude of mutual support that enables older people to be autonomous in a community and ideally between generations.

– Nursing homes should be converted to provide medical services directly to retirement homes, and families should be given the support they need to take care of a loved one at home.

– Dioceses, parishes and church communities should promote “a more caring pastoral relationship with the elderly” and regard them as a “great resource”, particularly in faith formation and as living witnesses of the faith.

“This vision is not an abstract utopian or naive pretext. Instead, it can bring to life and nourish new and smarter health policies and original proposals for a welfare system for the elderly,” the press release said.

“This requires an ethic of the common good and the principle of respect for the dignity of every individual” and the help of everyone – the Church as a whole, different religions, the world of culture, schools, volunteers, media companies and businesses – support of a “Copernican Revolution “that enables older people to stay in the homes they know or in welcoming, loving surroundings.

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Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, is shown in a 2019 file photo. Cardinal Tagle virtually delivered the annual Trócaire / St. Patrick’s College fasting lecture March 9, 2021. (CNS photo / Eloisa Lopez, Reuters)

March 10, 2021
Sarah Mac Donald
Catholic intelligence service

DUBLIN – Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, leader of the Vatican Evangelizing Church, has expressed concern over the “kidnapping” of religion by populist leaders who are sowing division and taking advantage of the anger of those who feel excluded.

Speaking after giving the 2021 Trócaire / St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, annual fasting lecture on March 9th on “Caring for the Human Family and Our Common Home,” the Filipino prelate warned, “In today’s world, the sense of division, and growing unfortunately religion is sometimes used to further divide Even within the same religious affiliation there are divisions. “

Referring to the recent rise of populist leaders, Cardinal Tagle described the phenomenon as “the return of powerful big bosses,” some of whom are “hijacking religion”.

These so-called populist leaders know where the pockets of angry people are and they present themselves as the messiah, he said. They use religion as a “convenient way” to find followers, he added.

The President of Caritas Internationalis noted that in the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” Pope Francis devoted several paragraphs to the question of populist leaders who claim that they are defending the people when in fact they are defending a certain group.

Speaking of Zoom from Rome, the cardinal stressed, “We must carefully examine why these leaders are getting followers. Why are they becoming popular?”

He suggested that the pandemic could exacerbate the marginalization of people such as the poor and migrants, and that is why Caritas Internationalis had issued two documents calling for better access to COVID-19 vaccines for the global south.

“I hope this pandemic will teach us the lesson that we are truly connected to one another and to the earth and that what happens in one part of the world can have a universal impact. I hope that we will grow accountable to others become.” he said.

Cardinal Tagle, a close associate of Pope Francis, said that while the pandemic could limit the practice of the faith, it could also “lead to pastoral creativity, especially within families”.

Speaking to the Catholic intelligence service, the Filipino prelate realized that the pandemic had caused “a lot of suffering”.

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples admitted: “For us in the Church it is part of the suffering of wanting to provide pastoral help and pastoral guidance, but we cannot do it as we are used to.”

However, it set the pandemic restrictions on worship related to the suffering of Christians who were excluded from the practice of their faith. He said he was inspired by Japan’s “hidden Christians”.

Cardinal Tagle recalled how they had kept their faith alive for 200 years and highlighted how Japan outlawed Christianity in the 17th century. When it reopened its doors to Christianity in the 19th century, the French missionaries who went to Nagasaki were surprised to discover Christians who had survived all those years without church structures.

“Amidst constraints, it is the families, the lay people, especially the mothers and grandmothers, who have passed the faith on. They have been creative,” said the cardinal.

He acknowledged that the pandemic had disrupted congregational life and the usual way of church services and catechetical education due to the restricted mobility, and said this provided an opportunity to identify those aspects of Christian life and church life which we “disregarded” adequately, “including” the role of the family in teaching the faith and forming families in the social doctrines of the Church. “

“In the past, the transmission of the faith, the teaching of prayer and the catechism happened in the home. It was the parents or grandparents who did it.” However, with the development of specialized ministries such as religious education and catechists, this had declined.

“With the lockdown, children could not be brought to Sunday school, and catechists and teachers could not do their usual work. Are parents able to establish their families, children, grandchildren and one another in faith and mission?” he asked.

“I think the pandemic has opened up opportunities for us, but it has also become a mirror that shows us where we have been weak in terms of Christian education.”

“This pandemic has led many churches and dioceses to rethink our usual ways of mission and pastoral engagement. Even here at the Vatican we are invited to reflect on what we call” normal “common ways to see how we can respond more appropriately to the changing situation. “The mission doesn’t stop, he said, and the question is,” How do we do this in a changed situation? “

Cardinal Tagle said his reflection on Lent in Trócaire was an attempt to bring together the themes of Pope Francis’ encyclicals “Laudato Si” on concern for our common home and “Fratelli Tutti”, the call for universal social friendship.

“We see a close connection between the two encyclicals,” said the cardinal, noting Pope Francis’ warning that “the deterioration in the ecology of our common home goes hand in hand with the deterioration in human relations. Disregard for people is also manifested in our disregard our common home, which is God’s gift to us all. “

He pointed out that many economic or political decisions are affecting the survival of the earth today. “The irresponsible use of creation now not only prevents the passing on of a livable, habitable world to future generations, but also violates a key element of church social teaching, namely that the goods of the earth are for everyone and must be shared by everyone.”

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