How Orange County became its own Catholic diocese 40 years ago

By Deepa Bharath
Orange County Register
September 17, 2016

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/diocese-729302-catholic-orange.html

Bishop Kevin Vann of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange stands outside Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove. The diocese will celebrate its 40th anniversary Sunday. It was established in 1976 by Pope Paul VI with 44 parishes and about 300,000 Catholics. Photo by Mark Rightmire

When Monsignor Art Holquin was a student in the early 1970s at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, the rumors already were flying: Orange County, which was part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was going to become its own diocese.

Holquin, now 63, didn’t make much of it. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1974, and his first assignment was at the Holy Family Church in Orange.

On the morning of March 30, 1976, Holquin was by himself at the church, as the senior pastor was away in Oregon. The phone rang in the rectory. On the other end was a reporter for a Catholic weekly newspaper in San Diego.

“So, father, what do you think of the big news today from Rome?” he asked Holquin.

“What news?” the priest asked back.

It had just been announced in Rome that Orange County would become a separate diocese, the reporter informed him.

“I’m delighted,” Holquin said. “Where is the cathedral?”

“Father,” the reporter said, “you’re at the cathedral.”

On Sunday, the diocese will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a Mass attended by thousands of faithful, a carnival and performances by Christian rock bands. The diocese, which started with about 330,000 Catholics, has grown to include 1.3 million members, 62 parishes or churches, 41 schools, three hospitals and care centers and a number of agencies serving the poor. The Diocese of Orange is the 12th-largest Catholic community in the world.

Holquin remembers the ceremony on June 18, 1976, when the diocese was established and the Most Rev. William R. Johnson was installed as the first bishop of Orange. At the time, Holquin was tasked with planning the installation, including selecting verses and hymns for the special liturgy. He remembers selecting one Spanish hymn, “De Colores,” a popular Mexican folk song.

“We had mariachis playing,” he said Thursday. “The cathedral was packed. And the pope’s representative read the official declaration establishing the diocese.”

GROWTH AND DIVERSITY

The Rev. William Krekelberg, now an archivist for the diocese and who was alongside Holquin at the time of the diocese’s formation, said the big change in 1976 brought the Catholic leadership much closer to the priests and parishes in Orange County.

“We now had our own bishop and diocesan administration,” he said. “So, it became a lot easier for us to get things done, whether it was building a church, a school or making infrastructural repairs.”

The timing was impeccable. The diocese’s establishment came just a few years before the migration of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who would flee their homeland after the fall of Saigon and the communist takeover in that country.

“The Vietnamese Catholics have had a tremendous influence on the diocese since,” Krekelberg said. “The refugees brought with them an intense dedication and devotion, which had an influence on our local Catholic population. The Vietnamese filled our churches, and they still do.”

The diocese opened a center to help refugees, and several parishioners at Holy Family opened their homes to these new American families, he said.

“Many donated items; it was a huge campaign,” Krekelberg said.

In addition to Vietnamese refugees, the migration from south of the border changed the demographics of the Orange County Catholic community, he said.

The Diocese of Orange ordained the first Vietnamese priest and bishop in the country. It also conducts a Vietnamese service each Sunday at Christ Cathedral.

Holquin said it is the diversity of the Catholic population in Orange County that has enriched the diocese in the past 40 years. Services are in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Samoan, to mention a few.

“We are a rich diocese because we are a microcosm of the universal church in terms of our multiethnic, multicultural composition,” said Holquin, who also served as pastor of the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, established in 1776 and considered the “mother church” of the diocese.

In September 2015, Pope Francis canonized Father Junipero Serra, the Franciscan friar who established the mission, making him Orange County’s first and only saint.

SEXUAL ABUSE LAWSUITS

Though the diocese’s growth was exponential, there was also a period of turmoil when the nationwide Catholic Church sex abuse scandal erupted. Bishop Tod Brown, who took the helm in September 1998, faced the brunt of the sexual abuse lawsuits. The diocese was the first to arrive at a settlement, for $100 million, on Jan. 15, 2004.

Brown apologized to 87 alleged victims and issued a Covenant of the Faithful, promising to be transparent with the media and the public. However, Brown later was criticized for not divulging that he also had faced an allegation of sexual abuse. That allegation was dismissed by church officials. Brown said the accusation was not true.

Speaking recently from his office in the Christ Cathedral’s pastoral center, the retired bishop said he was “unaware of the problem” when he took office.

“The challenge for me was to come to grips with what it was and what we needed to do to get the healing started and protect our youth in the future,” Brown said. “(Sexual abuse) is a problem that is endemic to humanity. We had it in the Catholic Church, too.”

Settling the lawsuits “was the right thing to do,” he said.

“We’ve established protocols for employees and clergy, background checks, audits, everything we can do to prevent the abuse from happening again,” Brown said. “This is unfortunately a part of our legacy, and it’s something that should never be forgotten. The actions we take to prevent abuse is unending. It must be.”

John Manly, a Costa Mesa attorney who represented 50 sexual abuse victims in the county, said those victims and many Catholics are still bitter about the lack of accountability.

“What the diocese really did was hired a PR firm and did window dressing,” said Manly, raised Catholic and a 1982 graduate of Mater Dei Catholic School in Santa Ana.

“The main people responsible for it were never held accountable, and that taints the diocese forever. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles dumped predators here, and the Catholic children of Orange County paid the price.”

Manly said the diocese now has policies in place to protect children.

“But it’s better now because of the victims who came forward with their painful stories, not because of the goodwill of the diocese,” he said.

Brown’s time as bishop ended with the purchase of the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral’s 38-acre campus in Garden Grove in 2011. The diocese at the time was planning to move to Santa Ana. But that changed when the Crystal Cathedral Ministries’ board voted in favor of allowing the diocese to buy the property, even though its bid was lower than what Chapman University offered.

“The Rev. Robert H. Schuller believed that his church should go to another church, not a secular entity,” Brown said. “This beautiful campus was God’s gift to us.”

A NEW HOME

On Wednesday, diocesan officials announced a $72 million plan to renovate the glass sanctuary in Garden Grove, which for decades had housed Schuller’s ministry and his “Hour of Power” TV broadcast watched by millions.

Longtime O.C. Catholics Tim and Susan Strader said they’ve seen the diocese grow from meager beginnings to one that serves 1.3 million.

The couple, who attend Our Lady Queen of Angels in Newport Beach, also founded Santa Margarita High in 1987. “The Catholic schools in this county have grown over these 40 years in terms of the quality of education they provide and helping students with scholarships,” Susan Strader said. “The church operates a variety of charities and ministries, from prison ministries to counseling for people who are depressed or suicidal.”

Current Bishop Kevin Vann, appointed in 2012, said a unique challenge he faced was “to know, understand and pray in a diocese with so many unique cultures and history.”

During his time here, the bishop and his diocese have been actively involved in social and political issues such as supporting immigration reform and opposing the recently passed End of Life Option Act, which legalized terminally ill patients ending their lives with drugs.

Vann said watching his mother, a maternity nurse, and his father, a postal worker, in action, and his own experience as a medical technologist working with premature infants, motivated him to make pastoral care of the sick and dying and “life issues” a part of his ministry.

Vann said the diocese soon will publish a revised diocesan plan, which will serve as a road map for the next five years.

“Our top priority at this time,” he said, “is completing the construction of Christ Cathedral.”