St. Camillus celebrates 60 years of care to patients

“You serve Jesus Christ — Jesus Christ in his passion, his suffering with the poor, the marginalized and those who have no one else to turn to. Your love for the suffering is a sign of God’s love. God’s compassion is in each of you in your compassion,” Archbishop José Gomez told 15 current and former hospital chaplains Aug. 24 during a Mass of Thanksgiving at the 60th anniversary of St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care.

In South Los Angeles: ‘We feed the hungry’

“Here’s the crew,” Kim Williams exclaims this late weekday morning from her electric wheelchair. She reaches out with both arms to bear-hug a young man with Down Syndrome. “Charles, my baby. How you doing?”

Positive energy: LACPB speaker will ‘challenge’ youth

From its humble beginning nine years ago as an opportunity for the business community to gather for prayer and breakfast before the work day, the annual Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast has grown into a two-day event (this year Sept. 15-16) that will likely draw more than 2,500 people.

Catholic Charities helps with relief after Calif. quake

The Church in northern California is helping respond to a major earthquake, which shook Napa Valley early Sunday morning, the largest earthquake to hit the area in 25 years.

Jennielynn Holmes, director of shelter and housing for Catholic Charities in the area, said they are partnering with local emergency response programs to provide assistance.

‘We’re saying the Church is here’

“I spend almost all my time visiting patients. We do not sit and wait for referrals to come to us. We go and see patients. We, ideally, see everybody.”

Father Bob Jones, a chaplain at Los Angeles Ccounty-USC Medical Center the last 17 years — back when one of the busiest public hospitals in the western United States was located in a historic art deco facility on State Street — has his black bag packed and ready to go. It’s stuffed with bottles of holy water, prayer books and holy cards to give away along with a translation of some Zapotec words spoken in the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico and info sheets about what St. Camillus Center for Pastoral Care has to offer.

Vocational formation and the new evangelization: Ongoing discernment

The 35-year old lawyer asks himself, “Do I leave the job that I love, sell my condo, and give up the life that I have been living to enter the Seminary? After all, I have been thinking about the priesthood since grade school.”

The 21-year old college student at the local state university has been volunteering on the weekends with a group of religious sisters visiting the sick, the elderly and the homebound. Although she has been excited about a career as an accountant, she is now wondering if God is calling her to be a religious sister serving the poor and the sick.

Local Korean Catholics welcome papal visit to Korea

Pope Francis’ visit to South Korea — his first trip to Asia and the first papal visit to the country in 25 years — was received positively by Los Angeles’ Korean Catholic community.

During his trip, the pope beatified 124 Korean martyrs, helped celebrate Asian Youth Day for young Catholics, and even conducted an impromptu baptism for the father of a deceased victim of last April’s Sewol ferry tragedy, which killed 300 people.

Middle East crisis: ‘We are still on the brink of extinction’

A day after U.S. warplanes dropped a barrage of bombs to help Iraqi and Kurdish ground troops take back Iraq’s largest dam near Mosul, some 500 Assyrian Christian supporters marched on Los Angeles’ busiest streets and freeway overpasses — from Union Station to City Hall — shouting “Stop ISIS Now!” while waving the white, blue and red Assyrian flag.

Immigrant youth: ‘The real question is what happens now’

It was just after lunchtime at the temporary housing shelter at the Port Hueneme Naval Base, and the Central American migrant teenagers coming inside from their tented dining room on the way to afternoon activities smiled and waved as they passed by the archdiocesan visitors.

Last of the old, first of the new’: Archdiocesan Golden Jubilarians for 2014

“Supported only by the weapons of truth and charity, we intend to pursue the dialogue that has begun and to advance, as much as it will be in our power, the work that has been undertaken.”

Not long after he succeeded Pope John XXIII in 1963, Pope Paul VI issued this statement to verify that the work of the Second Vatican Council started by John in 1962 would continue. Indeed, in 1964 the third session was held with three documents issued on Nov. 21: Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), Orientalium Ecclesiarum (the Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite), and Unitatis Redintegratio (the Decree on Ecumenism).