The purpose of the Jericho Walks – there was a second one April 22 – was to shore up both the psyches and souls of St. John Vianney parishioners, after a year of celebrating liturgies and services in the parish hall and a nearby tent.
“People are still mourning the loss of the church,” Msgr. Nichols told The Tidings. “People have remembered that they were baptized there, they had First Communions there, they had their marriages there, they went to Mass there. So a lot of this is still within the first year very sensitive. We’ve had people actually looking at the church from outside and crying. So there’s been a tremendous loss over this.”
Construction only began recently on what’s being called a “Midterm Church,” which will have a cement floor, heating and air conditioning, rows of chairs and a tent-like covering. The weather-proof structure, which will seat about 750 churchgoers compared to 1,000 in the old church, should be finished by June.
“We think the Midterm Church will be up — and people always groan when I say this — but it would not be overwhelming to think of it lasting four years,” the pastor said, noting that “we’re still miles away” from coming up with specific plans for the new church.
‘Oh, it really did happen’
All of this, of course, has taken its toll on the parish priests — Msgr. Nichols, Father Viveros, Missionary of the Holy Spirit Father Ricardo de Alba and Father Mike Sezzi, in residence at St. John Vianney.
“I’ve seen the burnt-out church for a year, and even now sometimes when I go inside I get very emotional,” said Msgr. Nichols. “The walls are still standing and it looks like Berlin 1945 — pretty much like it was after the fire and the original clean up. And from the priests’ standpoint, it’s been extremely difficult to try to do ministry cramming everything into small spaces. We’re a very busy parish with 5,500 families. So it’s been very challenging.”
But after a moment, his tone changed: “It’s also been a very life-giving experience and has renewed the faith of our people. So we’re still fully blessed here.”
Two longtime parishioners agree. Sharon Altman, 65, has belonged to St. John Vianney Parish since 1972. Her two children received all the sacraments in the Hacienda Heights church except for being married there. And on that horrendous Saturday night last April, she stood nearby feeling distraught and helpless, incredulously watching that church being engulfed in flames shooting 150 feet into the black sky.
“It’s been hard with some of the church still standing,” she said. “In fact, most of the time I don’t like to look that way. And then every once in a while, I kind of look and say, ‘Oh, it really did happen.’”
Altman says the parish priests have worked hard at steadfastly holding up the spirits of parishioners, trying to make things more upbeat than they really were. She makes a face and shakes her head about going a year without even a temporary church. But quickly adds there’s now at least some visible progress, pointing to where ground has finally been broken.
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The Jericho Walk also raised her spirits. “Oh, it was wonderful,” she said. “It kind of let you express your feelings inside about what you went through that night. And I think the whole experience, it’s made us all closer. I think we’ve come together as a church. We’re the church, no matter where we have to be.”
Sixty-four-year-old José Pena, who’s been a parishioner for three decades, can’t even remember all his family’s events that have taken place in St. John Vianney Church. One of the most recent, and moving, was the funeral Mass for his mother celebrated by Msgr. Nichols.
As the Spanish choir director, he’s had to make major adjustments because of the arson fire, such as having the choir on the stage behind the altar in the O’Callaghan Center. Personally, he’s also struggled.
“It’s something that you don’t reconcile why — Why somebody would want to do something of that magnitude that affects so many people?” he wondered aloud. “It’s forgiven, but hard to understand why. And it’s already one year, and we still have the carcass of the old church there facing us every day, every morning. When you come to church, it’s the first thing you look at. So you say, ‘When?’”
Pena’s spirits, however, were also lifted by the Jericho Walk to “tear down the walls.”
“It feels like, OK, now we’re doing something a little more proactive,” he pointed out. “And like Father said in his sermon, it’s time to forget the past and start looking at the future. Instead of ‘poor me, poor me’ and ‘how much I have suffered,’ it’s time to forget all that and go forward.”
Posted with permission from The Tidings, Southern California's Catholic weekly newspaper.