Floyd L. Begin, installed as the first Bishop of Oakland, attended every session of the Council and dutifully espoused the spirit and letter of its decrees. When the three-year conclave ended, he determined that his new diocese would be the first American see to implement its reforms. So the first thing the Cleveland native did upon returning from Rome was to hire Robert Rambusch of New York to refurbish his cathedral church. St. Francis de Sales was to be gutted and completely renovated to conform to the new liturgical norms — notwithstanding the history or sensibilities of the local parish community in Oakland, California.
The bishop’s unilateral decision to reshape the diocese’s mother church without local consent or consultation was bold, dramatic and provocative. But it was the quickest way to cast in concrete his commitment to implement the mandates of the Second Vatican Council. He too could aim for the jugular!
When it was dedicated on February 4, 1967, the gleaming edifice at the corner of Grove Street and San Pablo Avenue lit up the heart of Oakland’s inner city. Ironically, it illuminated the gloom of the surrounding landscape: the dismal Greyhound bus depot across the street, the halfway house for convicted felons down the block, the decaying hotel and flophouses along the avenue. Its empty nave highlighted the equally forlorn and forsaken congregation: seniors from the surrounding high-rises and the residents of the low-income family dwellings nestled between apartment buildings and commercial storefronts. (The neighborhood had once been a prosperous enclave for Irish and Italian immigrants. But the war years had caused it to mutate into a haven for out-of-state job seekers and military-base personnel. The parish school, once an academy for the offspring of the original settlers, now tutored poor Hispanic children from the neighborhood and African-American youths from the nearby ghetto.) Why should these local folks attend the inauguration of a resplendent reconstruction that in their eyes represented a mausoleum commemorating the death of a treasured past?
If anyone had reason to be bitter, disgruntled and irate, it was Monsignor Richard “Pinkie” O’Donnell, pastor since 1942 of St. Francis de Sales parish and its first rector when Rome in 1962 selected it as the cathedral church of the newly created Diocese of Oakland.
“Let me tell you something, Father Osuna,” he intoned shortly after I was assigned as his assistant, “I was serving Mass as an altar boy in this very church when the earthquake of nineteen hundred six shook this place to its foundation. The parish pulled through that tragedy just fine. But it will never survive what this bishop from Ohio has done to it. He didn’t just gut the place, he has torn the heart out of the people!”
That was not all. Evidently, Bishop Begin had plundered the parish coffers as well. Rumor had it that in order to pay for most of the renovation, he expropriated all but $27,000 of the half million that the good monsignor had accumulated in savings over his twenty-five-year tenure!
O’Donnell was right. The “defacing” of the ancient shrine had completely demoralized the locals. There was a time, he pointed out, when they could point to the images of their ancestors who had posed as models for the host of saints that populated walls and ceilings. Now there was no one up there. All had been obliterated by a blanket of cream-colored paint! The transcendent stained-glass window of the Crucifixion above the high altar was gone, boarded over by layers of redwood paneling! The white marble altar, with its terraced columns and Gothic niches, had been dismantled and replaced by a bishop’s throne! A masterpiece of renovation perfectly suited to the new liturgical norms? Perhaps, but to Pinkie and his people it represented an arid arena and a shameful sepulcher.
But events would soon prove Monsignor O’Donnell wrong. The people of St. Francis would recover. The arid arena would become a Mecca for pilgrims from the Bay Area and around the world. In time, thousands would flock to the Oakland Cathedral to experience the “creative liturgies” that began to enliven and rejuvenate the flagging inner-city parish. These vibrant weekly liturgies forged worshipers into a praying and caring community. Over time, the liturgies inspired and impelled them to reach out to others in Christian fellowship and social action. And it was to Sunday Eucharist that they returned each week to celebrate their identity and their work, and to be spiritually revitalized for the week ahead. In short, worship became the engine that sustained personal devotion and fostered expanded ministry, thus exemplifying the Council’s definition of liturgy as “the source and summit of Christian spirituality.” This memoir is the story of my life in that remarkable parish. As priest and artistic director, I spent nineteen years contributing to its creation and growing in its nurturing embrace. With countless others I experienced a vision, which, like that of Jacob at the shrine of Bethel, shaped my life forever.
When Jacob awoke from his sleep he exclaimed, “Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!” In solemn wonder he cried out: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gateway to heaven!”
(Genesis 28:16.)
Original St. Francis de Sales interior, remodeled in 1967 (lower)
Seasonal liturgical design by Patricia Walsh
Prelude: Before It Happened
Theatre, music and art had been as much a part of my life as my desire to be a priest. As a boy soprano I sang solos from the choir loft at St. Louis Bertrand church in east Oakland. Monsignor Silva insisted that I become an altar boy and sent me untrained on to the sanctuary at the age of eight. Sister Kevin Marie, O.P., principal of the school, encouraged me to design artwork for the classroom and persuaded my mother to have me enrolled for piano lessons.
When I entered the seminary in Mexico City after the sixth grade, the rector recognized my musical potential and arranged for organ lessons. [Both my mother and father were from Mexico and agreed to have me study there, knowing that countless relatives would take good care of the youngest of their brood of ten children.]
After I transferred to St. Joseph’s minor seminary in California, Father John Olivier, S.S., dean of studies and director of music, mentored me in the art of choral conducting and appointed me seminary choir director. Under his supportive wing I teamed up with Michael Kenny (the future bishop of Juneau, Alaska) to form K.O. Productions. Together we wrote original musicals (California or Bust), mounted and performed in Broadway plays (Kismet, Harvey) and tried our hand at Shakespearean theatre (Henry IV, The Merchant of Venice).
At St. Patrick’s major seminary, where the focus was on the study of theology, the arts became strictly a personal pursuit. A group of fellow seminarians and I established the “Art Forum,” where we encouraged each other to draw and paint, make stained-glass windows, delve into sculpture and even try our hand at bookbinding.
Always needing a musical outlet, I started a glee club. We performed classics such as Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and St. Nicolas Cantata and gave concerts of American and international folk songs. I also was compelled to start a “gloom club” for those unfortunate souls who were unable to pass the audition for the glee club. (To my delight, some of these aspiring singers, like Dan Derry and Jimmy Tonna, actually learned to carry a tune!) Once a month I picked up my guitar and, along with a couple of my Mexican-American classmates, serenaded visiting families and friends with musica ranchera. These were satisfying enterprises that kept my creative juices flowing.
During summer breaks, I enrolled in undergraduate courses at Stanford University and Holy Names College in order to reinforce my natural musical and artistic skills with an academic foundation.
One would expect that, once ordained,
