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June 10, 2025By Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas
My brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,
Last Saturday we held a Graduation Mass for the Class of 2025 of the Catholic University of America (CUA) at the Pima Community College downtown campus. The Tucson satellite of CUA is currently located on that campus.
This is the second graduating class from our program, and it included nine graduates (David Alvarez, Jade Carrasco, Michael Inorio, Sophia L, Zachary Lopez, Andrea Morones, Kevin Rodriguez, Layla Rodriguz, and Gloria Valadez). Obviously, the graduates’ families were immensely proud and rightly so. Acquiring a college degree from this prestigious university is an honor worth celebrating. The faculty speaker after the Mass was Mr. Barry McInerney. The student speaker was Andrea Morones.
The Tucson site for CUA began in March of 2020 as an opportunity for young people to earn a graduate degree from a Catholic college close to home. A number of years ago, Tucson Mayor, Jonathan Rothschild, wrote a letter to the President of CUA asking if they would consider making Tucson a satellite program in the southwest for the university. The President of CUA brought it to his board and they agreed to explore the idea, which now has come to fruition.
The university here offers a Bachelor of General Management and Interdisciplinary studies. We currently have 70 students enrolled and it looks like 25 or more additional students will enter in the Fall.
Major donors that made this opportunity possible for our young people in the community were Mr. Jim Click, Mr. and Mrs. Humberto Lopez, Mr. Ross McCallister, Mr. And Mrs. Dan McCabe, Mr. And Mrs. Barry McInerney, Mr. Jack Diehl, The Kathleen Delaski Foundation and Mr. Joaquin Hansen of Journey of Hope along with many other supporters. It must be encouraging for them to see how their gift is making a difference and bearing fruit.
Kieran Roche continues to serve as the Assistant Dean of the School. Ellen Fisher is the Assistant Director of our program.
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This week I will be meeting with Maury Bois, President of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, an organization that does much good in many of our parishes. Mr. Bois’ term as president ends in September, so a new president will be elected. I know we are all grateful to him for his leadership over several terms.
My father, many years ago, was a St. Vincent de Paul man. He loved the organization for all they were doing to help people in need. It was one of his major commitments.
I look forward to learning more about what the organization is now doing in our Diocese. I am aware that they conduct nine thrift shops within our Diocese. In the past they have held programs to help people get out of poverty, supporting them in acquiring skills to assist in their ability to manage their own lives. We have 33 conferences in the Diocese from Safford to Yuma to Nogales to Casa Grande and elsewhere that every day answer the phone and go out to visit with people in need, providing food, furniture, help with utilities and supporting people being evicted so they don’t find themselves in the street. St. Vincent de Paul is answering the call of the poor as St. Vincent would want and did back in the 16th century.
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Every diocese is required to have a finance council who work with the bishop in dealing with financial matters. Our Finance Council will be meeting this week. Conan Bardwell, our chief finance officer, will present the financial status of the Diocese to the Board. Nancy Stephan still serves as our chair of the Finance Council. Among its members now are Diana Ezrre-Robles, Alex Miramontes, Omar Mireles, Mark Mistler, Don Romano, Joe Schifano, Kevin Schick, Jim Tress and Greg White. I am grateful for their important service and advice.
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Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week Rev. Alan Valencia, Vocation Director, Rev. Luis Pablo Ochoa, Rev. Jesus Gomez, Rev. Richard Rivera, and Rev. Abundio Colazo-Lopez, Associate Vocation Directors, and I, will be meeting with our seminarians at the Redemptorist Renewal Center as they prepare to return or begin at the seminary as well as some who have applied and still are waiting for the decision if they will be accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese. To become a seminarian today involves an extension process including psychological testing, interviews, a written autobiography, recommendations as well as meeting with the seminarian acceptance board who make their recommendation to the bishop who then makes the final decision.
During the Convocation there will be an opportunity for our seminarians to get to know one another better, what influences or persons helped encourage their vocation, and what some of their hopes are for their seminary formation.
On Thursday evening, the families of our seminarians and donors who help support our Vocation Program will join me and our Vocation Director for Mass, dinner and an enjoyable evening together with the seminarians at the Pastoral Center.
Currently we have six seminarians: Carlos Nagore who will be ordained a deacon on September 6, 2025, Julian Osborn and Dylan Martin who will be entering Mt. Angel Seminary, as well as Josue Limon and Stephen Grummett who will be attending Mundelein Seminary. Matthew David has been accepted as a seminarian but is not yet in seminary as he is completing his degree in nursing. There are four others who are applying to be accepted as seminarians for the Diocese.
Pray for vocations.
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On Saturday I leave for San Diego where the bishops from all our Dioceses in the U.S. will be meeting for our summer meeting. Back in 1999, Bishop Manny Moreno hosted all the bishops for this meeting at El Conquistador in our Diocese. The bishops enjoyed the Ol’ Pueblo except for the heat. I was an auxiliary bishop in Chicago at the time. Little did I realize I would be appointed to serve as Bishop Moreno’s Co-Adjutor bishop just two years later when I got a call on Friday the 13th, from the Apostolic Nuncio, the Holy Father’s representative in the U.S., telling me that the Holy Father asks that I go to the Diocese of Tucson. The rest is history. It has been a blessing.
This year, our gathering is a retreat conducted by Most Rev. Michael Miller CSB Archbishop emeritus of Vancouver, Canada. It is time for bishops to fraternally and spiritually connect with each other. Retreats are held every three years at this time. The other years are business meetings. All the bishops meet twice a year. In the fall, the meeting is in Baltimore, and in the spring, in either Louisville, Kentucky, or San Diego, California, or Orlando, Florida.
While at the meeting, I will meet with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the African Subcommittee that approves grants for dioceses all around Africa, as well as Catholic Relief Services. I continue to serve on their Boards.
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On Sunday, I will attend Fr. Mike Bucchiarelli’s 50th jubilee celebration at St. Andrew’s Parish in Sierra Vista. Fr. Mike, who is from that area, will have an earlier celebration Mass on Saturday at Our Lady of the Mountains Parish in Sierra Vista where he served as a pastor. Imagine 50 years of priestly ministry. One can only wonder about all the people’s lives Fr. Mike touched in those years of service. We wish him many more glorious years.
During his ministry, Fr. Mike served as pastor at Blessed Sacrament in Mammoth, St. Bartholomew’s Parish in San Manuel, Our Lady of Lourdes in Benson before coming to Sierra Vista as pastor of Our Lady of the Mountains. He began his ministry as Associate Pastor at St. Monica and then at Our Mother of Sorrows. For a while, he was the chief engineer for the Diocese’s TV station.
Even in retirement, Fr. Mike continues to serve, assisting where he can as well as helping to facilitate the bishop’s opportunity to meet with the recently ordained and those priests new to the Diocese. This happens three times a year and is an important experience for those ordained one to five years to make the transition from seminary to active ministry and for those new to the Diocese to become acquainted with the processes of how things work in this Diocese.
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Archbishop John Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe issued the following Op-ed which I fully support. In addition, another aspect of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” targets people sending remittances back home to support their families in Mexico. A taxation of 3.5% will be applied to every remittance sent from the United States by individuals with non-immigrant status, including those who are undocumented. This measure is deemed to disproportionately impact Mexican-descent families whose members live, work, and contribute to the prosperity of the U.S., especially in border region economies, such as the one between Sonora and Arizona. People targeted by this legislation already pay taxes on what they earn. Why should they be taxed again when trying to help their families back home.
As people of faith, we need to let our senators know our concern about this legislation and demand that they amend it significantly or not put this into law.OP-ED
“Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ betrays the poor.
The church must oppose it.”
By Most Reverend John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe
ALBUQUERQUE – Wednesday, June 4, 2025 – Most Reverend John C. Wester's Op-Ed, "Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ betrays the poor. The church must oppose it.” appeared in "America Magazine" June 3, 2025.
"The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a budget reconciliation bill that is contrary to Catholic social teaching. The bill is now waiting to be debated in the Senate. It should be strongly opposed.
"Moreover, the church and the bishops of the United States should lead the way in speaking against this bill and calling on Catholics to work for its defeat. Because of its overall effects on those who are most in need, passing this budget would be a moral failure for American society as a whole. Unless the church opposes it in the clearest possible terms, we will squander the credibility of our witness to the Gospel and Christ’s command to care for the “least of these.”
"Known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, the legislation is anything but beautiful, at least from the perspective of Catholic teaching. It basically steals from the poor to give to the rich, and it will leave millions of low-income U.S. citizens struggling to survive. It also funds a mass deportation campaign that will separate immigrant families and profoundly harm children, including U.S.-citizen children. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
"It is estimated that the legislation would cut $700 billion over 10 years in Medicaid spending, leaving 7.6 million American families without health-care coverage. It also reduces spending for food assistance to the nation’s poorest by an estimated $300 billion over 10 years, adversely impacting 40 million low-income persons, including 16 million children. As many as 5.4 million per year could lose food assistance from the cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill transfers wealth from citizens with the lowest tenth of income to those with the highest tenth of income, the largest transfer in U.S. history.
"On immigration, it appropriates $75 billion for a mass deportation campaign, which includes funding for detention centers and a substantial increase in border and interior enforcement personnel. It allows these agents to remove people based on the suspicion of illegal activity, without judicial review. And it increases fees for such benefits as temporary protected status (T.P.S.), humanitarian parole and work permits for asylum applicants, leaving these important protection mechanisms out of the reach of qualifying families.
To make matters worse, the bill undermines other important church teachings, such as the need for a progressive tax structure based on the ability to pay and measures to combat climate change, as it raises taxes on the working poor and repeals clean energy tax credits.
The list goes on. The cruelty of this bill is historic.
"This bill violates several principles of Catholic social teaching. The first is the preferential option for the poor, which teaches that the most vulnerable should claim the attention and assistance of the rest of the society. The second is the principle of solidarity, in which all people are interconnected and the powerful should be advocates for the marginalized of society. And perhaps the most important principle is the advancement of the common good, so that all members of society are given a chance to thrive and become full members of the community.
"As passed by the House of Representatives, this bill forsakes the most vulnerable among us, widens both the economic and human gap between the rich and poor, and ignores the common good to benefit only the wealthiest in our country.
"What would be the human costs of this bill? It is likely that millions will fall into poverty, leaving them to rely on churches and private charities, such as Catholic Charities, to survive. More people will go without health care, at least until they arrive at the emergency room, when their condition becomes critical. Immigrant families, many of whom sit in the pews at Mass every Sunday, will be separated, traumatizing children.
"There is another factor for the church to consider in this debate, as well—its moral authority. Unless the church stands up for the poor and marginalized of the nation, consistent with Catholic teaching, its moral voice will be diminished in the future. There are times when the church needs to forsake political considerations and take a stand, even if that effort is unsuccessful. This is one of those times.
"There is time to defeat this legislation, or at least to change it substantially, as the U.S. Senate has yet to consider it. But this will not happen unless the church states unequivocally its opposition to the House bill and any similar Senate version. An approach which opposes parts of the legislation but indicates support for other provisions—as was done when the bill was before the House—gives legislators the cover to vote for the bill. There are other ways to support the few parts of the bill worthy of it. They should not be achieved on the backs of the poorest of society.
"In human terms, the Trump administration’s “big, beautiful bill” is in fact very ugly. For the sake of our church and nation, I call upon my fellow bishops and the Catholic community nationwide to contact their elected officials and petition for its defeat."
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Please keep in your prayers the father of Clara Heslinga for a full recovery from an operation he had after a fall. We continue to pray for John and Elena Dwyer’s daughter Emma who is hoping to have a bone marrow transplant soon.
We also pray for Mr. Gerald Chouniard who died last week. He and his wife Pat, also deceased, were kind supporters of the Diocese and started La Purisima Retreat Center and Shrine in Sierra Vista. Many from the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere have visited the shrine praying for those loved ones sick or suffering. We pray the Lord will welcome him into the heavenly kingdom.
Also remember in your prayers the parents of a young girl of just over two years old, Blair, who died at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. She is the granddaughter of Veronica Lopez, principal of St. Francis School in Yuma.
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If you’ll recall on May 18 we celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving for Pope Leo at Saint Augustine Cathedral. Our communications team edited a video highlighting the beautiful gathering. I texted it to Pope Leo, my friend for more than 30 years, and he responded! He watched it and asked me to thank all of you for your prayers and many blessings. You can watch the video here:
As always, I thank you for your support and prayers.
Yours in Christ,
Most Rev. Gerald Kicanas
Apostolic Administrator, Diocese of Tucson