Priest-chaplain: ‘At this time, at this juncture, black lives matter’

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2020

By Mark Pattison

As daily protests over the death of George Floyd while in the custody of a Minneapolis police officer have spilled over into some of the United States’ largest cities and roiled the nation, a chaplain to several law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area said, “At this point, at this time, at this juncture, black lives matter.”

Father Jayson Landeza, a priest of the Diocese of Oakland, California, says he makes that declaration because “these are the ones who are being profoundly affected by police brutality.”

The last three parish assignments of Father Landeza, who is of Filipino, Irish and Hawaiian heritage, have been to parishes whose membership is 90% or more African American. Growing up in the Bay Area, he said, “I can think of all the times I was call ‘Jap,’ called the N-word and worse because I was with a bunch of African American kids.”

Father Landeza — a chaplain to the Oakland Police, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, two smaller police forces nearby, plus the regional branch of the FBI, the Secret Service and other federal agencies — said that “San Francisco Bay Area cops have a good relationship with the communities” they serve.

“The people I work with in law enforcement are good people,” he told Catholic News Service. “There’s not a cop I know that’s not deeply and profoundly offended by what happened in Minneapolis.”

He said the bad actions of a few African Americans should not stereotype all African Americans. In the same way, he added, “you can’t paint this broad picture of Catholic priests vis-a-vis sex abuse, with cops’ abuse vis-a-vis violence.”

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