Wildfires, pope's health set tone at opening of LA Religious Ed Congress

ANAHEIM, Calif. (OSV News) -- January's devastating LA wildfires set the tone for the start of the 2025 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, which kicked off Feb. 21 emphasizing the theme of compassion.

"Compassion makes us brothers and sisters to those who suffer, compassion calls us to accompany the broken and the wounded," said Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles in his remarks at the opening ceremony of the congress, held Feb. 21-23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. "This will be our challenge in the months ahead after these wildfires."

Several thousand people attended the opening session inside the convention center arena, which began with prayers for Pope Francis' health as he remained hospitalized since Feb. 14 for a complex lung infection that has provoked the early stages of kidney insufficiency, the Vatican said.

The ceremony was headlined by firsthand testimony of two survivors of the Palisades Fires: Msgr. Liam Kidney, pastor of Corpus Christi Church in Pacific Palisades, and the parish's secretary, Lorraine Hartman. Kidney recalled his initial reaction to the news that Corpus Christi's tabernacle had been recovered from the destroyed church by firefighters.

"It struck me that here we had our tabernacle containing the body of Christ, and we're called Corpus Christi, which means ‘the body of Christ,'" recalled Kidney. "And I said, ‘No fire can destroy the body of Christ, because that body of Christ lived through that fire, and we, the body of Christ, will live through that fire."

Hartman spoke of the shock from a parish community losing so much so suddenly -- homes, jobs, the church building -- and the difficulty of prayer in such times. But as she began to field a barrage of calls and messages offering generous support for Corpus Christi parishioners in the weeks after the fires, she came to realize that "God was showing us his love and compassion through these people."

"God was truly showing us that he was walking with us through the members of his Church," said Hartman, the parish's secretary since 1999.

The ceremony featured musical and dance performances from various congress participants, including members of Loyola Marymount University's African Music Ensemble, St. Catherine Academy in Anaheim's Military Children's Choir, and a Vietnamese dance group from Catholic parishes in Orange County.

In her remarks, lead congress organizer Sister Rosalia Meza described the congress, whose theme this year is "Called to Compassion," as an opportunity to "renew our hope and strengthen our communities with compassion" ahead of a long road to recovery for people affected by the fires.

"In difficult times, it's difficult to speak of a God of compassion," said Sister Rosalia, who is senior director of the LA Archdiocese's Office of Religious Education. "But … God chooses to be present with us, and is willing to enter into the messiness of our problems and the ups and downs of life."

Sister Rosalia, a member of the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity religious community, spoke of compassion as understood and lived out by figures such as St. Oscar Romero, Cesar Chavez, and Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman.

She also recalled the story of four American female missionaries murdered in 1980 during El Salvador's civil war, and the words of one of them, Maryknoll Sister Maura Clarke, resisting calls to leave the country out of concern for danger before their deaths: "If we abandon (the people of El Salvador) when they are suffering the cross, how can we speak credibly about the Resurrection?"

Sister Rosalia invited participants to ask God "for the grace to embody God's compassionate love" during the congress.

"Jesus revealed the depth of his love, not with lengthy explanations, but through tangible acts of love and compassion," she said.