Los Angeles, Calif., Sep 28, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Reprinted with permission from Angelus News.
After being brought into this world against the odds, losing his father at 8 years old, and surviving a battle with cancer, Father Adrian San Juan knew one thing for certain: that he would “rather be with the Lord.”
That attitude — and memories of the young priest’s zeal for Christ — are what is left to console grieving parishioners, relatives, and fellow priests stunned by the news of the 43-year-old’s sudden passing Saturday, Sept. 19, after collapsing at the start of a wedding at St. Linus Church in Norwalk, California, where he served as administrator.
“He passed away doing what he loved: celebrating the Eucharist,” said Rafael Alvarez, a St. Linus parishioner and seminarian at the Queen of Angels Center for Priestly Formation. “That was one of his most joyful moments.”
Alvarez was there assisting Father San Juan as he entered the parish’s canopied “outdoor church,” kissed the altar, and waited for the wedding party to process toward the altar. But a few moments later, something “didn’t feel right”: to Alvarez’s surprise, Father San Juan went to sit in the presider’s chair before falling to the ground.
Paramedics were called and attempted CPR on Father San Juan, who had suffered an apparent heart attack, before taking him to PIH Whittier Hospital while another priest at St. Linus, Father Marco Reyes, stepped in to continue the wedding.
Father San Juan was pronounced dead a short while later. A small group of family members were briefly allowed into the hospital, and a priest was able to give him the last rites.
Despite the shock over the apparently healthy priest’s death, though, those who knew the priest told Angelus they were comforted that his passing came before the altar, after a “second life” in which he lived his vocation to the fullest.
Father San Juan was born the last of six children in 1976 in Valenzuela, Philippines, outside the capital city of Manila. His birth was welcomed as a miraculous surprise, coming 11 years after the family’s next oldest child.
“Because of my mom’s advanced age, she had a very critical pregnancy [with Father San Juan],” said Victoria Siongco, the late priest’s sister. “She almost lost him.”
His mother, Gloria, spent the final months of the pregnancy confined to bed rest, begging God for her son’s life.
“We would see her every day praying with her arms outstretched, like a manifestation of a sacrifice, praying not to lose him,” recalled Siongco.
Both Father San Juan and his mother survived what his family says was a complicated childbirth. Eight years later, hard times struck the family again when his father, Carlos, succumbed to lung cancer.
As Siongco remembers it, her little brother showed signs of a vocation even before starting elementary school. He was fascinated by religious processions and was already singing in church by age 3.
“He loved the saints, he loved praying, he loved singing, he loved everything about the Church,” said Siongco.
By the time he had finished high school in 1994, he had broken up with his girlfriend at the time with the intention of entering the seminary.
Those closest to Father San Juan say his life was marked above all else by a life-and-death experience during that time: a testicular cancer diagnosis in 2002 a few months before his ordination to the diaconate.
Chemotherapy left him hairless, pale, and thin, but he vowed to follow through with his ordination to the diaconate. Family, friends, fellow seminarians, and even professors rallied behind him in prayer, and the cancer went into remission in 2003. He was ordained to the priesthood the following year.
“This is my second life, no doubt,” Father San Juan told Manila’s Phillipine Sunday Inquirer Magazine in an interview after his ordination in 2004. “I see myself in the hands of a loving Father. A second life is his revelation to me that I have a mission to do in His Name.”
In the same interview, the new priest shared that the cancer battle had given him more joy and a stronger faith.
“Life will not always be a journey of certainty, of controlling it the way we plan it,” he continued. “Doubts and so-called trials will come. But if we seek God in all things, then we learn that God’s love is everywhere.”
The priest credited his “second life” in particular to Divine Mercy, the Virgin Mary, and the miraculous intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, to whom he had a fervent devotion for the rest of his life.
After spending six years ministering in parishes and schools in Manila, Father San Juan transferred to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2010 to be closer to his family. He served in several parishes, and was officially incardinated as a priest of the archdiocese in 2015.
Among his brother priests, Father San Juan was known as a “holy priest who had a wonderful sense of humor, and always had a smile on his face,” according to Vicar for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Msgr. Jim Halley.
Auxiliary Bishop Alex Aclan remembered how shortly after arriving in the archdiocese, then-Msgr. Aclan relied on Father San Juan twice to write the music for two fundraiser musical plays benefitting the Filipino Priests Association of Los Angeles.
And during the annual Christmastime Simbang Gabi Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, it was Father San Juan who was charged with leading his brother Filipino priests in singing in Tagalog after Communion.
“That’s how he endeared himself to the Filipino priests here,” recounted Bishop Aclan. “He was an excellent composer, pianist, and vocalist.”
One of those priests, Father Rizalino “Riz” Carranza, spent four years with him at St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley, where Father Carranza is pastor and Father San Juan served as associate pastor from 2015 to 2019. He said Father San Juan was the ultimate “people priest,” a gifted preacher whose enthusiasm while celebrating the Eucharist was infectious.
“He really appealed to a lot of people of different ages, from the older to the younger,” recalled Father Carranza.
In private, his former pastor says Father San Juan was a man of deep prayer. Walking past the door to his room, Father Carranza would sometimes catch a glimpse of Father San Juan on his knees with a lit candle burning.
“He always expressed that he would rather be with God,” said Father Carranza.
At St. Linus, where Father San Juan spent the last year of his life, parish business manager Ana Engquist said the impact from his short time there will be felt for a long time.
“He brought a strong spirituality to the parish,” said Engquist, including starting a Divine Mercy prayer group as he did at St. Peter Claver.
“When he came on board he made it very clear we’re going to be a family, and that was kind of a strange concept to me. I was used to just having a working relationship with my pastors.”
Instead, Father San Juan told parish staff that they would be eating, praying, and even fighting together, as long as it was followed, of course, by forgiveness.
“His goal was to get us to heaven and to really live our faith, not just on Sundays, but day-to-day, to do the little things to get to heaven,” said Engquist.
Engquist and Alvarez agreed that the new administrator was a unifying presence for the parish over the last year.
“He was able to bring healing to the parish staff, and restored the ministries that were broken,” said Alvarez, whom Father San Juan guided and encouraged in his decision to enter the seminary this year.
During the recent months of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Father San Juan took a “hands-on” approach in bringing the sacraments to his parishioners, whether through organizing a team to livestream Masses or building a dignified “outdoor church” in the parish parking lot with a stage and canopy when COVID-19 restrictions forced religious services to be held outdoors this summer.
“He died doing what he loved to do, and I think that he came to our parish to heal us in a lot of ways. And he fulfilled that mission,” said Engquist.
Part of that mission was accompanying young people like Alvarez and the couple that he had prepared for marriage on that fateful day to embrace their vocations. Among them also was his own niece, whom Father San Juan was also helping prepare for marriage with her fiancé.
Siongco told Angelus that she and her sister “Fely” (both of whom live in nearby Walnut) will miss her brother’s visits on his days off to eat together, plan vacations, and take 6,000-step walks to help them stay in shape.
Even in the face of losing their little brother, family chaplain, and travel companion, Siongco said her family is consoled by the outpouring on social media about the lives Father San Juan touched, evidence of the good fruit that his vocation bore.
“It’s an honor for Father Adrian to be summoned by the Lord,” said Siongco. “When our heavenly boss calls us, who should say no?”
[…]
Read his marching orders earlier. “Additionally, the document calls for more lay participation in all ecclesiastical decision making. It specifically calls for more women in leadership roles but does not settle the question about a possible women’s diaconate. It also condemns exclusion based on a person’s ‘marital situation, identity, or sexuality’”.
He can’t be serious. A pastor is condemned if he refuses Trans folks to advise how to pastor his parish? But unfortunately he is. Although what right in heaven or hell does a pontiff have to condemn, or even suggest condemnation [by God?] if a priest declines? In an earlier CNA article “Pope cites ‘Amoris laetitia’ on doctrine in synodal implementation note” Pope Francis urged we apply the doctrines layed out in Amoris Laetitia. Those doctrines are primarily the primacy of conscience and mitigation theory. Amoris does not replace the Gospels.
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
“Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs,”
Unless those traditions and local needs involve attending the TLM, then sorry, no synoding for you.
Also can’t wait for the local LGBTQ crowd to suddenly start demanding changes to the mass to suit their needs.
Looks like “synodality” is synonymous to “Realpolitik”.
DOA as far as I’m concerned.
“[The final document] participates in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter, and as such, I ask that it be accepted,” Francis wrote…”
There is a definition of the ordinary magisterium in the CCC (#891 and some other paragraphs). Also I believe in the documents of Vatican II. The teaching magisterium consists of the bishops with the pope. This synod document that the pope signed is not from the bishops, but from a group consisting of bishops, priests, nuns and laity. How could this be part of the magisterium? I don’t believe it can.
Also, the pope asks that it be accepted. If it truly was part of the magisterium I would think that he would state that it must be accepted.
What’s the rush?
The Pachamama Apostasy Cult: “Implement the authoritative indications of the Synod on Synodality document now.”
The Son of the Living God: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Get thee behind me….”
The “Synod on Synodality document is part of the authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome.”
The crowning achievement of the career of the Pontiff Francis is that he has communicated that he is a monumental fraud, and as such he adds something without authenticity to library which likewise is devoid of authenticity.
Zero plus Zero = Zero.
And as a reminder about the shelf life of this man’s “teaching,” Archbishop Scicluna of Malta, sycophant of Pontiff Francis, has established that this particular Pontiff’s teaching apparently gets buried with him, since by the rule-of-Scicluna, his cult only regards the teaching of “this current pope, not previous popes.” But I may be mistaken about Scicluna, he may regard the Pontiff Francis as an oracle, in which case, for Scicluna, and other such sycophants, the Pontiff Francis remains pope forever, even in death, and to him they pledge their loyalty…forever and ever.
It matters not at all what a man proclaims regarding his belief about the existence of God and how he tries to convince himself in some abstract way that he does believe in God.
If a man denies the immutability of truth, he is an atheist, even if he denies the implications of his beliefs to himself.
How much dire can the state of the Church be than to have an atheist for a pope and a prevailing episcopate too spineless to challenge him?
True Edward. Unless our faith is in God, whose existence is perfect and unchanging, pure dynamic, our belief is instead conceptual, imperfect, always subject to revision.
And, yet, about “always subject to revision” is not to be misunderstood as by some synodalers:
“The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some categories of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort or alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Those who hold such an opinion do not avoid dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility relative to the truth to be taught or held in a determinate way” (“Mysterium Ecclesia: Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Day,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 24, 1973).
With St. Augustine: “We can say things differently, but we can’t say different things.”
As was the case of what was “believed” by Mary reported at Lk 1:45 as in uncertainty (cf. Lk 1:29, 34).
What do you call a shepherd with no place guide his sheep? Or, put another way, with no clear preference where his sheep end up?
Lately I have been studying Henri de Lubac and how he navigated the period where his theology was scrutinized by the Pope Pius XII. One of my questions is were Jesuits more learned then? Jesuits of today seem to “clot up” on major points of Tradition/Doctrine, if not create new doctrine out of whole cloth.
I want to be loyal to Mother Church and never found to be throwing a rock at the artwork – even when it belongs to Rupnik.
Every time I turn around this trial becomes more challenging, more difficult, if not impossible.
Fuzziness, that is also the Anglican solution to things; and just look where they are!
Ornery wideloopers I’ll say!
Here for once we are not speaking of orientation, but disorientation.
In Francis’ Magisterially Synodal Church: The synodally dialogic church will participate in pagan tradition, and pagan tradition will participate in Francis’ church.
Roman Catholics will continue in the unity of such a church under such a pontiff, but Christ will remain as the Triumphally Suffering Head. Roman Catholics will continue to hold the faith and hope of knowing that Christ our Head lives through, survives, and overcomes death.
Let us make jest of the lazy, ridiculous, the glaringly sad stupidity of any vatican-led holes to hell.
If you do not feel righteous anger over the reign of Jorge Bergoglio, your love for Mother Church is seriously deficient.
Please speak with accurate language. We’re told the document comes from the magisterium of the Bishop of Rome, then Francis tells us it’s of a pontifical magisterium, your commentary says it’s from the magisterium of the Church. What level will the next commentator reach? Will he consider the document as divinely revealed?
I know that a good writer always tries to avoid repetition when writing, but inasmuch as in temporal affairs you can use equivalent terms such as “Biden has decided X” , “Washington has decided X”, and “the United States has decided X”, that’s not how it works in ecclesiastical affairs. The qualifiers of magisterium between the Bishopric of Rome, the Papal office and the Church are not interchangeable just like that. This sort of spurious and deceptive language paves the way for novel doctrines on papal infallibility, and ought to thus utterly be rejected.
The directives are sufficiently vague, and thus can be safely ignored, given that most parishes already have healthy lay participation and are already in obedience to the *magisterial* intent of the document. The intent of the malcontents who were trying to use the synod as a way to democratize the Church is another question, but thankfully their intent doesn’t have to be considered.
Left-leaning bishops will use this as an excuse to make their untenable parishes even more untenable, but overall the effect will be negligible. Carry on.
The Synod was simply a thin cover for normalizing more garbage into the church. I cannot see myself cooperating with a woman deacon nor will I be interacting in a church setting with anyone who is “trans”. Ever. No thanks. I will quit my church ministry first.This Pope has been a complete disaster.
Your report misrepresents the Synodal document on the subject of sexuality when it says: “It also condemns exclusion based on a person’s “marital situation, identity, or sexuality.” The Synodal document does not do that. It only uses the word “sexuality” once, when it says: “Many participants were delighted and surprised to be asked to share their thoughts and to be given the opportunity to have their voices heard in the community. Others continued to express the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital status, identity or sexuality.” That is not a condemnation of exclusion on the basis of “sexuality”. A homosexual, for example, may feel excluded because the Church treats the acts involved in any active homosexual relationship as sinful and does not accord their relationship the same status as a heterosexual relationship. That will and must, of course, continue.
Stephen, given that “ecumenical new church” has ordered the Catholic world to bless gay couples – in the style of James Martin – your final statement only holds true for disobedient Traditionalists whom Bergolio labels “rigid” and is actively persecuting from underground China to downtown Chicago.
“A homosexual, for example, may feel excluded because the Church treats the acts involved in any active homosexual relationship as sinful and does not accord their relationship the same status as a heterosexual relationship. That will and must, of course, continue.”
This is because these demeaning sexual acts, deny the Sanctity of the marital act, within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, which is Life-affirming and Life-sustaining and can only be consummated between a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife. While it is true that some marriages deny the Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, resulting in the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts which are sinful because they deny the inherent Dignity of the human person, all same-sex sexual relationships deny the Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament Of Holy Matrimony, and thus demean the inherent Dignity of the human person, and are thus sinful.
I pray that the next Pope will take this document, and along with Amoral Leticia, Traditiones Custodes and Tutti Frutti, toss it on the bonfire. I’m sick and tired of this Synodal garbage which has obsessed this Pontificate even though it’s a colossal waste of time, especially since there are more urgent matters for the Church to be concerned with, like persecution of Christians in China, Nicaragua and Africa, Gender Ideology in the West, and the war in Ukraine.
👉👈
We are all Protestants now PF
In the Church of What’s Happening Now
I reject that PF.
I repeat with apology:
PF is obviously a disciple of the Jesuit hairy tick Teihard de Chardin.
See excellent new book “Theistic Evolution” in which Wolfgang Smith disembowels his multiple anti Christian fantasies. This is what infects our Jesuit pontiff.
Listen to the advice given to St Augustine “ Take and read”.
Hat tip to William Briggs.
“…Jesuit hairy tick…”
Delightful!
A hearty and Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Catholic Americans!
Last Saturday, November 23, Gerhard Cardinal Muller provided his personal rejection of the Francis’ Synodal Church Model. His rejection was printed in the First Things Catholic website and is entitled, “The 7 Sins Against the Holy Spirit; A Synodal Tragedy.” That’s right, finally a true “Catholic” Prince of the Church has condemned Francis’ Synod in simple and powerful TRUTHS of the One True Catholic Apostolic Tradition. Cardinal Muller, the former Head of the Congregation of the Faith in Rome, demolishes this new false model with great words of wisdom. He does so in a way that is incisive, precise, and Heavenly! And now that he has officially and publicly pointed out the fact that serious apostasy is at the doorstep of Francis’ Pontificate, then how soon will this heroic and holy prelate suffer white martyrdom, just as Vigano, Strickland and many other holy priest have been. Yes, in a sense it can be said that these souls, orthodox Catholic souls, are now living martyrs for the Catholic Faith.
I strongly encourage Mr. Olson, CWR Editor, an all on this site to read what the Cardinal writes in a five minute read. I can assure you that you will be very hopeful after having read what this saintly man of Christ writes as he truly speaks TRUTH to evil power.
Viva La Christo! and JCALAS Forever!
Presto, Change-O!
Come quickly, Lord Jesus!