fFor years, underground San Francisco drag performer and cinephile Peaches Christ has been filling the city’s renowned Castro Theater with her Midnight Mass series, juxtaposing cult film screenings with live drag parody re-enactments and stage interviews. These loving but irreverent late-night events are an integral part of LGBTQ+ culture at the city’s preeminent art-house theater, itself one of the most visible landmarks in San Francisco’s most famous gay district.

As Peaches Christ puts it, “Cinema was my religion and the Castro is our Vatican.”

And now, a month after hosting the US premiere of The Matrix Resurrections and a few months before its 100th birthday, the owners of the opulent 1,400-seat movie palace have announced that it will soon become primarily a live entertainment venue and will no longer screen many films at all.

Wednesday’s news sent shockwaves through the city’s artist and film communities and revealed a partnership between Castro and Another Planet Entertainment (APE), a Bay Area concert promoter. Known for preserving other historic venues — and for producing Outside Lands, a three-day music festival usually held in Golden Gate Park every August — APE announced that it is planning a major renovation of the interior and famous marquee, as well as a dramatic transformation in the kind of events that the Castro will host.

“We want to present all types of programs in the theater – comedy, music, film, community and private events and more,” the organizer said in a press release.

Cast members stand at the premiere of The Matrix Resurrections on December 18th. Photo: Noah Berger/AP

The news stunned local filmmakers and festival programmers, who urged APE to seek input from the community – so much so that the promoter rushed to placate the reeling city, saying nothing unexpected would happen overnight.

Century-old movie theaters and single-screen theaters have been disappearing from San Francisco for years, victims of rising operating costs and the popularity of streaming services well before the pandemic hit. But as a cultural institution, the Castro Theater is unique. It is home to numerous festivals and premieres and matinee screenings of Camp Hollywood classics such as Gray Gardens and Auntie Mame. A destination for American film buffs, where you might watch a painstakingly restored 1940s noir, witness director Peter Bogdanovich belittle Cher during a Q&A session, or just sing along to Grease.

Already dark for 15 months during Covid, the Castro reopened in June 2021 to host the 45th edition of Frameline, San Francisco’s long-standing LGBTQ+ film festival.

Continuing a long-standing tradition of prefixing every film with live music from the in-house organ – no longer a “Mighty Wurlitzer,” but arguably the world’s largest pipe-digital hybrid organ – the return of the theater embodied the dawn of last summer’s optimism in California briefly eased its pandemic restrictions on indoor gatherings. It’s also very, very gay: San Francisco, the Judy Garland-revived theme from the 1936 disaster film of the same name, is always the last song before the curtain goes up. Consequently, the theater’s large and vocal queer fanbase was particularly saddened at the prospect of losing it forever.

“We know there won’t be the same amount of screenings at this venue and of course we’re very saddened by that,” said James Woolley, Executive Director of Frameline.

However, he did confirm that the 46th iteration of the festival, an anchor of San Francisco’s Pride Month celebrations, is still ongoing in June.

Peaches on stage at the Castro. Photo: Courtesy of Peaches Christ

Although Peaches Christ was initially dismayed, a call to APE put her mind at ease.

“They assured me that the programming would be very well thought out. They’re not going to program it like they would Bill Graham, or remove the seats,” she said, referring to a much larger venue that welcomes EDM DJs and mainstream musicians.

While concerned that the Castro might devote itself entirely to live performances, Peaches noted that comedy festivals like Sketchfest had long since broadened the scope of what the theater was doing. Second screenings were hardly his bread and butter.

“As much as I would hate to see the repertory calendar disappear when you went to the screenings, nine times out of ten it was less than half full,” she said. “I ran a cinema and have been in the business for a long time. I knew it wasn’t a sustainable model.”

Peaches is optimistic about APE as a local entity that’s much smaller than national companies like LiveNation. They promised her they would honor her existing contract and also assured her that they would install a new cinema screen, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, and make other necessary repairs.

“What the general public doesn’t see is that the Castro needs a huge electrical upgrade,” she said. “The old wiring sometimes caused circuit breakers to trip. It was stressful.”

Still, the underlying economics are what they are, which is why many San Francisco theaters are now derelict (or repurposed as gyms).

“Theater business is tough, and I think it’s especially tough for independent historic single-screen arthouses. You can only charge so much for a movie ticket,” said Lex Sloan, filmmaker and executive director of the 110-year-old single-screen Roxie Theater, the oldest such venue in San Francisco. “We are more than just cinemas. We are places where people make memories and make new friends. Places like the Castro and its programming are the quintessence of what makes San Francisco weird and wild.”

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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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