– Brought to you by Fr. Bernardino Andrade (bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)
Today I took my IPhone and “pretended” that I knew something about technology. Believe it or not it worked.
I asked the Siri for “How many Portuguese People are in California”? The answer was: In California there are 79.572 Portuguese people.
The Portuguese Community in California has always been very large. And the Portuguese, like the other ethnic migrant communities, wherever they go, they take with them their language, their traditions, their culture, their food, their dances and, especially, their faith. For this reason it is common to find, in a few cities, Catholic Churches built by the Portuguese to practice their faith.
One of the examples is the Five Wounds Church in the city of San Jose with its beautiful old architecture, built over 100 years ago. This church became a Parish Church and from the beginning has always had a Portuguese Priest as its Pastor who would say Mass, preside to the Sacraments and Funerals and also all other services in Portuguese, even if it was also available for other languages especially the English language.
There was a time when there was no Portuguese Priest available to continue that tradition. The Bishop assigned an American priest to be the pastor of the Five Wounds Portuguese Parish.
One day I visited the Five Wounds Church and spent some time talking with the American Pastor who was presiding to a Portuguese Community without knowing how to speak the language.
That’s when he told me about the way the Bishop approached him for this assignment. He said that he had reacted to the Bishop saying:
– But, Bishop I don’t know how to speak any Portuguese and that is a big responsibility. I don’t feel prepared for that job. What am I going to do when they need me?
The Bishop answered:
– “Just love them”. It worked.