By Ignacio Aceves
When I was attending the seminary, aside from the sexual abuse I had to endure while in the hands of my Franciscan pedophile, a student was picked to read from a book about St. Francis of Assisi. In the book were many readings about how this saint dedicated his life to reaching out to the poor and homeless. He would even touch lepers, putting the perceived dangers of doing such a thing aside. What a guy! Anyway, you'd think that was how it was amongst the Friars at the seminary, right? Wrong! Here are a few things I can recall happening when I was there living amongst the Franciscan Friars.There was a Friar at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara who couldn't stand having homeless around because he said they were all thieves who wanted to steal coins from the Old Mission fountain. This Friar actually had a long stick that he bent at the end like a mini hockey stick so that he could scoop the change up from the bottom of the fountain, left there by tourists during the day or night.
This Friar would approach me sometimes and ask if any of "them" (homeless) had been around and that I knew what to do. He wanted me to make them leave the property so as to secure his little fountain of coins. Did I do what he wanted me to as far as making them leave? No, and I had never intended on doing so. First, I felt it was wrong to do such a thing and second, it wasn't what the patron saint of their order would have wanted, anyway, the homeless to be shunned? They often slept in the dark shadows under that overhang that you actually have pictured in one of your posts is where they could be found sometimes at night. (Pictured again here)
I can also recall how there were members from the greater community who wanted to use the now empty dormitories on the property to provide emergency housing for the homeless. I gathered that it would have been funded by outside sources and other charities who work to help them. After all, the Franciscans are supposed to be perceived as being poor beggars who are supposed to reach out to help the poor also.
Poetic huh?
Well, on several occasions, I asked the Friar slash landlord of the property his opinion about offering the dorms as temporary housing, to see if he would have a change of heart, and his responses ranged from, “Out of the question” to "Are you kidding!"
He said he was "concerned" about the well-being of the choirboys. He then went on to say that those dorms needed to be used for other purposes anyway, like for Choir Boy Camp.*
In the end, this Friar ended up in a California prison for molesting one of those very choir boys. So you see, things aren't always what they appear to be on the surface when it comes to the Franciscan Friars.
Did I mention how a number of homeless people slept on the seminary property at night after a day of being elsewhere? These people would literally have their sleeping bags line-up behind a particular hedge in totem pole style so that the person sleeping at the beginning of the line had his feet just above the head of the next person and so on. It looked like a train of sleeping bags.
PS: Br. Adrian was the Friar who wanted me to keep the homeless away from the seminary and Old Mission properties. Did his fountain of coins go to the poor? No, they went to his cigars and booze. His nickname was actually Sluggo.
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Ignacio Aceves is a Contributing Editor to City of Angels Blog, and writes of the years he was a student, employee at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara in the 1980s and 1990s.
*City of Angels covered the choir directing perpetrator priest on January 26, 2010, here:
Predator Franciscan describes years he ran Santa Barbara Boys Choir, 'A constant supply of attractive little boys' (5 pages scanned here) While reading through his Probation Report, we scanned five pages from Sexual Autobiography of Robert Van Handel...
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Steve of UK wrote: "They're big babies. They haven't grown up enough to realize that in this world you're always going to have sin and scandal. They have some kind of immature, adolescent idea that the Church is going to be perfectly sinless, and usually their need to point the finger at the church is tinged with the other mark of immaturity-- a terrible (and embarrassing) self righteousness and pride. They're so obsessed and outraged by the sin and scandal of 'the Catholic Church' that they are blind to the sin and scandal in their own lives.
ReplyDeleteI think it was Abp. Fulton Sheen who once met an ex Catholic on a plane. The man was going on and on about the corruption and graft and simony and nepotism in the Catholic Church. Sheen listened and then said, "What is it that you have stolen?" The man was instantly stunned into silence for he had been guilty of serious theft. I suspect this problem is epidemic amongst ex Catholics."
Listen carefully to their most grievous complaint against the Church and you may glimpse what sin is unconfessed in their own life.