ARTICLES

Quinn's Failed Coup

SLAVIC CATHOLICS REBUILD PARISH

By Stephen Schwartz

"We held many Masses in exile," says Stephen Laznibat. He ticks off the locations: the Slovenian Hall on Potrero Hill, the Slavonic Cultural Center on Alemany Boulevard, and the chapel at the Presidio of San Francico. Today the Slovenian-Croatian Catholic congregation has regained control of the Church of the Nativity, its house of worship at 245 Linden Street in the Hayes Valley district of San Francisco.

But from 1994 to the end of 1996, Nativity was closed-- one of the nine parishes shut down by former Archbishop John R. Quinn. And because its worshippers would not give up their commitment to the faith, they held "Masses in exile." The struggle to keep control of the church-- which was the property of the congregation, and not of the hierarchy-- took the community's advocates to the Vatican, repeatedly. "There was too little Christianity on Church Street (the location of the archdiocesan administrative offices)," said Tom Brandi, a San Francisco attorney who took the community's petition to the Vatican.

The reason offered by Quinn for the closure of Nativity, which was established in 1903, was a decline in attendance. As with other older ethnic groups in the city, Slovene and Croat families had moved out to the suburbs. Assumption of Mary Croatian Catholic Church in San Jose, with a new and large basilica, attracts hundreds of worshippers each week, as well as large assemblies for social events.

"We were a small group but we refused to give up," said Adam Eterovich, a long-time leader of the Croatian-American community. Eterovich has chronicled the history of the Dalmatian, Slavonian, and other Croatian communities in California, dating back 300 years. "The money for Nativity was collected beginning late in the 19th century,'' he said. "I have a benefit ticket for a dollar, dating back to 1894.'' The church was built by a group of Dalmatians, a community that accounted for 80 percent of the church's original founders, and who hail from the eastern Adriatic coast of former Yugoslavia. The remainder were immigrants from Slovenia, he said.

The church burned down during the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and a temporary church not much larger than a cabin was used on Potrero Hill until the church was rebuilt and reopened. The original charter of the church held that it should be open to any Slavonic Catholics, including Czechs and Poles as well as Slovene and Croatian immigrants. However, for many decades there were few of the former nationalities in San Francisco.

Eterovich traces the history of Croatians in the broader California area to the exploration of the Gulf of California by the 17th century Jesuit father Ferdinand Koncsak, a Croat from Zagreb who founded the mission at San Ignacio in Baja California and published the first authoritative map showing Baja as a peninsula rather than an island. In addition, South Slavs were known to sail aboard Spanish and Russian vessels that called in colonial California. During the Gold Rush, Dalmatians became a major element in Northern California society. Some worked as miners, and others opened coffeehouses, saloons, restaurants, and boarding houses. "Croats were heavily represented in the Barbary Coast area of San Francisco,'' Eterovich notes. Later, waves of Croatian and Slovenian immigrants worked in the Pacific Coast fishing industry, as longshoremen on the waterfront, and, after accumulating savings, purchased fertile land for fruit and vegetable production. That heritage is seen in such successful enterprises as the Grgich Hills Winery, whose Croat founder, Michael Grgich, came after World War II. "We consider him a newcomer,'' Eterovich said. Although the Dalmatians were active in labor and social causes, they retained a deep Catholic faith that remains visible in their worship in San Francisco and San Jose. Masses include members of all generations, from the oldest to the youngest, and sermons are traditional.

The Quinn closure of the church in 1994 was a hard blow to Croatian community activists like Ivo Vucicevic, who had operated a Croatian-language radio program in the city. "The closing came while the terrible war was still going on in Bosnia, with many people's relatives suffering there,'' Vucicevic said. "For us it was of supreme importance to maintain this island of peace and Christian charity here, as a living expression of the alternative to war and intolerance, represented by the message of Christ.'' Members of the Nativity community responded to the horrors of the Balkan conflict in a range of ways. They sponsored visiting speakers, raised funds for relief, collected clothing, and participated in interfaith and intercommunal cultural events.

Although Quinn was apparently unimpressed with the symbolism of Slavic Catholicism in San Francisco, his successor, archbishop William Levada, saw the matter in different terms. When Levada acted to return Nativity to its founding community, at the end of 1996, his decision drew on local precedent and the example of Pope John Paul II. Levada directed that Nativity be reopened as a special ministry to all Slavic Catholics, echoing the intentions of its original foundation. The church became a national church for Polish Catholics as well as Croats and Slovenes, and a Polish-born priest, Father Czeslaw Rybacki, was assigned as pastor. Father Rybacki is a member of the Society of Christ, the Mission Society for the Church in Poland.

Levada preached at the reopening of Nativity on Christmas Day 1996. "It seems to me that the desire of the Croatian and Slovenian people to have this church, this home in which to worship and continue their religious and cultural traditions, and the desire of the Polish community to have a place where they could also feel at home, is an expression of that perennial longing of the human heart, to seek that desire, that knowledge of what is the goal of every human heart. As St. Augustine so beautifully said, 'Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.'"

Mass at Nativity, the Sunday before the Christmas miracle for which the church is named, offered an atmosphere of traditional Catholicism. About 200 worshippers filled the chapel, with its stained-glass windows inscribed in Slovenian and Croatian and its papal flag, nearly to capacity. The church choir, which draws on participants from both communities, sang parts of the mass in accord with the heritage of Croatian Catholicism, which draws on Byzantine as well as Roman ritual. Father Rybacki preached a sermon on the life of Joseph, the carpenter and father of Jesus, stressing Joseph's obedience to God after the Lord ordered him not to abandon his pregnant wife Mary. "Joseph was a provider, who stood by his wife and worked hard to support his family, offering a precious example to us in these times when so many children are crying out for fathers,'' Fr. Rybacki said.

Love for the Mother of God is strong among Croatians, who view her as their Queen, much as do the Poles. In addition, the Poles and Croats, like the Nicaraguans, turned to their church and to Mary for inspiration and guidance in their resistance to Communism.

Morning Mass on December 20 was followed by Wigilia Parafialna, a traditional Polish Christmas Eve gathering and meatless lunch. The church maintains a full agenda of events serving both its Polish and its South Slavic adherents.

The fusion of the differing Slavic traditions has not been without friction."We had some problems at the beginning," said Ivo Ravnik, a photographer, labor figure, and long-time leader in the Slovenian community. "We stood up together, Poles, Slovenes, and Croats, and we wondered if it would work. But in the end, it did."

Poles, Slovenes, and Croats belong to a single family of languages, but their national histories, cultures, and experiences in the United States, especially California, are different. Although Poland's state independence was suppressed by its powerful neighbors, Germany and Russia, the Poles supported an elite that kept the national spirit strong. By contrast, Slovenia attained statehood for the first time in 1991, the same year Croatia gained independence after centuries of domination by Hungarians as well as the ruling Turks in Bosnia, which has a large Croatian Catholic minority.

In this century, while Poland was free for decades, Slovenes and Croats saw the fall of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires followed by years of oppression within the borders of Yugoslavia. A state ruled by the Orthodox Serbs, Yugoslavia practiced consistent discrimination against its Catholic citizens as well as against its Muslim minorities. Some observers consider Slovenes and Croats a more southern people, not unlike their Italian neighbors. As Adam Eterovich points out, for many years in San Francisco, Croatian fishermen served as leaders of the Italian fishermen's cooperatives, as well as their own. By contrast, until very recently, most Polish immigrants to the U.S. clustered in the eastern and midwestern communities, centered on mining and such heavy industries as steel.

But the Holy Father has recognized the common destiny of Slavic Catholics. Centuries ago, Poles, Croats, and Slovenes played a major role in the defense of Christendom against the Ottoman advance, and in this century they similarly provided a bulwark against atheistic Communism. In October, the Pope journeyed to Croatia to beatify Cardinal Aloizije Stepinac, who was imprisoned by the Communist regime in Yugoslavia after World War II and falsely charged as a collaborator with the German authorities in Croatia during the war. In fact, Stepinac had tried to save the last Grand Rabbi of Zagreb, Rav Moshe Miroslav Freiberger, from the Nazis. (In June 1999, Holy Father plans to travel to Slovenia to deliver his blessings to the Slovenian bishops.)

The spirit of Stepinac has guided the Croatian and Slovene Catholics of San Francisco in reopening their church. Like the Catholics back home in the martyred countries of Poland, Croatia, and Slovenia, San Francisco's Slavic Catholics, thanks to Archbishop Levada, can once again enjoy the faith of their fathers.