THE TELEGRAPH: A member of the radically-orthodox Catholic group Opus Dei has been appointed as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles.
Jose Gomez has been parachuted into the archdiocese of five million to try to lure the increasingly lapsing faithful of southern California back to Church.
The appointment was described as the Pope's revenge on Hollywood for filming The Da Vinci Code.
Benedict XVI's choice comes after Colombia Pictures depicted Opus Dei as a secret society of murderous monks who, according to author Dan Brown, were trying to cover up the truth of Jesus's secret affair with Mary Magdelene.
The appointment will give Opus Dei enormous influence in the American Church and Vatican, and is the most senior appointment for a member of the group.
It will also lead to Mexican-born Gomez, formerly the Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, becoming the first Latin American US cardinal, a position that will give him influence in Rome and the right to vote at a papal conclave.
The choice is likely to dismay the Catholics of Hollywood, which falls within the archdiocese. The reigning archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, avoided confrontation, but Archbishop Gomez is less likely to duck controversy.
Opus Dei, which he joined in 1978, is seen as one of the most devout of all the Catholic groups. Some of its priests practise self-flagellation while praying to the Virgin Mary and also wear a cilice – a spiked garter – to help them to mortify the flesh and avoid sexual sins.
One of Archbishop Gomez's primary tasks will be to deal with the fallout from the abuse crisis.
None of the 2,000 priests of Opus Dei, which has the status of a "personal prelature" of the Pope, has ever been embroiled in a sexual scandal.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, however, is one of the worst afflicted by the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has convulsed the US Church since 2002. >>> Simon Caldwell | Tuesday, April 06, 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: The archbishop is a champion of immigrants yet embraces strict orthodoxy on such matters as abortion and gay marriage.
Reporting from San Antonio and Los Angeles
When Archbishop Jose Gomez introduced himself to the faithful Tuesday morning, he described Los Angeles as "the global face of the Catholic Church." He might as well have been talking about himself.
Gomez, 58, who will succeed Cardinal Roger Mahony, is a reflection of the future of American Catholicism. Born in northern Mexico, now an American citizen, he is one of the millions of Latinos who will make up the majority of Catholics in the United States within the next 10 years.
And like many of those Latinos, he is at once a conservative and a progressive: unyielding in his opposition to abortion and gay marriage, passionate in his advocacy for immigrants and the poor, confounding to those who try to wedge him into the traditional right-left political paradigm.
During his six-year tenure atop the San Antonio archdiocese, Gomez emerged as a leading advocate for doctrinal conformity, determined to stave off what he saw as creeping secularism in the church.
He denounced one Catholic university when it invited then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to campus, because she favored abortion rights, and another when it invited a Benedictine nun, because she had advocated the ordination of women. Under his reign, a local Catholic high school ended its relationship with an organization that raised money to fight breast cancer, because the same organization gave grants to Planned Parenthood. After a 17-year-old lay advisory commission created by his predecessor suggested that gay marriage might be a human rights issue under one reading of the church's teachings, Gomez disbanded the commission.
"The doors were closed for collaborative communication," Mary Moreno, one commission member, said in an interview Tuesday. "We just got a letter. And when things are done like that, it kind of leaves a sting." >>> Scott Gold and, Jessica Garrison and Louis Sahagun | Wednesday, April 07, 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Opus Dei seeks to make everyday life holier: Members attend daily Mass and set aside prayer time. Not all engage in corporal mortification, and those who do say it's nothing like in 'The Da Vinci Code.' >>> Carla Hall | Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels >>>
