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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO Newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco
www.catholic-sf.org
SERVING SAN FRANCISCO, MARIN & SAN MATEO COUNTIES
MARCH 28, 2019
$1.00 | VOL. 21 NO. 6
San Bruno’s Catholic Worker House: Welcoming those with ‘nowhere else to go’
Pope: Mary inspires those seeking their vocation
NICHOLAS WOLFRAM SMITH CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
A few dozen people were gathered in the dining room of the Catholic Worker Hospitality House in San Bruno for breakfast on a drizzly Wednesday morning. Tables were filled with guests chatting and enjoying company or taking quiet time to eat breakfast alone, while volunteers served breakfast and stopped to talk with guests. Pausing his work for a moment in the dining room, Peter Stiehler, the house’s director, told Catholic San Francisco, “You can see what we do here is serious, but it’s lighthearted too. It reflects the joy here.” On April 1, the Catholic Worker Hospitality House in San Bruno will celebrate its 23rd anniversary. Five days a week, the Catholic Worker dining room serves breakfast to between 70 and 80 people. Over the years, the house has added more services: A few years after the breakfast program began, Stiehler was able to start an overnight emergency shelter housing up to nine.
CAROL GLATZ CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
(PHOTO BY NICHOLAS WOLFRAM SMITH/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Judy Pena, a guest at the San Bruno Catholic Worker Hospitality House dining room, laughs during breakfast March 20. Pena said she enjoys chatting with friends over breakfast. “Everyone comes here with their memories,” she said. The Hospitality House will celebrate the dining room’s 23rd anniversary in April. Since then, the house has been able to offer permanent supportive housing to needy residents in two homes. “All of our work, one thing has grown out of another,” Stiehler said.
The house also acts as a hub for other services. Showers are available every day, medical professionals stop
VATICAN CITY – Signing his document dedicated to young people, faith and discernment, Pope Francis said Mary, the mother of God, is a source of inspiration and strength for everyone who seeks to understand their vocation and remain faithful to it. Greeting some 10,000 people, many of them families and young people, in Loreto, Italy, on the feast of the Annunciation, the pope said Mary can help all believers dedicate themselves to “the path of peace and fraternity, founded on welcoming and forgiving, on respect for others and on love as a gift of oneself.” “Mary is the model of every vocation and the inspiration of every vocational pastoral program: Young people who
SEE CATHOLIC WORKER, PAGE 5
SEE POPE, PAGE 30
Anti-gun violence group working to change culture of ‘disposable life’ CHRISTINA GRAY CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
Mass shootings like the one that claimed the lives of 50 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand March 15 continue to dominate headlines, but a St. Brendan parishioner who is part of a national gun violence prevention group said that gun reform is in fact happening at the state level. “Change very much can happen and is happening,” Elizabeth Moore, the San Francisco chapter community outreach coordinator for Moms Demand Action, told a group of St. Dominic parishioners at a Lenten soup supper talk on gun violence and Catholic principles March 15. The talk, sponsored by the parish’s Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation committee, took place incidentally on the same day as the Christchurch shooting by a self-proclaimed white supremacist armed with an arsenal of legally acquired firearms. Citing a U.S. Centers for Disease Control report
‘The more life is considered disposable, the more people are inclined to buy guns and to not worry about what unintentional or even intentional consequences there might be.’ ELIZABETH MOORE
St. Brendan parishioner covering incidents from 2013-17, Moore said that 100 Americans are killed every day by guns. Firearm deaths are the second-leading cause of death for American children and teens, just behind motor vehicle deaths. For African-American children and teens, it is the leading cause of death.
The deaths include suicide and what Moms Demand Action calls “unintentional” deaths from “irresponsible gun ownership.” “If you live in the U.S. you are 25 times more likely to be shot than citizens of other developed countries in the world,” Moore said. Many Americans have “stopped even raising an eyebrow” at the headlines about gun violence, Moore said. But others, especially youth and students, are helping to close gun law loopholes, particularly at the state level, by exerting pressure on lawmakers, she said. “We are now birthing a new generation of gun sense advocates,” she said, noting as an example last year’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Before the shooting, only five states had some version of what is called a “red flag” law, or an “Extreme Risk Protection Order,” Moore said. Such measures permit police or family members to petition a state SEE VIOLENCE, PAGE 25
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