THE SUNDAY EXTRA

SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2020

KEN MILLERAssociated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — Okla-homa City honors victims of the 1995 bombing that shocked the nation in what remains the deadliest act of domestic ter-rorism in U.S. history through a memorial and museum, annual remembrance ceremonies and a marathon.

This year, for the 25th anniver-sary of the April 19, 1995, attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that left 168 people dead, organizations throughout the city are making special ob-servances through art.

“(Arts) can be an outlet for expressing, particularly emo-tions, in a safe way,” for both the audience and the performers, said Dr. Vaile Wright, director of clinical research and quality at the American Psychological Association.

“Anniversaries for some can be what we call a trigger ... a trigger is often thought of as an unhappy remembrance of what happened. For others, coming together with people and having a remem-brance is incredibly important,” to share grief, Wright said.

In February, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic performed “Of Thee I Sing,” a symphonic and choral presentation it com-missioned.

The Oklahoma City Ballet is planning multiple performances, including one choreographed to songs by country singer Vince Gill, a native of Oklahoma.

“As an arts organization, I thought it would be good to ac-

knowledge it somehow, rather than just come out on stage and make an announcement, (or) have a moment of silence,” said the ballet’s artistic director, Rob-ert Mills.

Gill, Mills said, has given his blessing and use of his songs “Oklahoma Borderline,” “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” “Hey God,” “When Love Finds You,” and “The Sun is Gonna Shine on You,” which range from somber to upbeat.

“There’s so many young peo-ple that weren’t even born,” Mills said. “People should not forget days like April 19.”

Reactions from those directly impacted by the bombing are mixed.

“We will never heal from what happened April 19, 1995,” said Jannie Coverdale, whose grand-sons Aaron Coverdale, 5, and Eli-

jah Coverdale, 2, were among 19 children killed inside the build-ing’s day care.

“If they think they’re heal-ing us they’re just wasting their time, maybe they’re healing themselves,” Coverdale said.

But Susan Walton, 69, who was making a deposit at the credit union inside the building when the truck-bomb exploded, said she’s grateful for the efforts.

“To know that people are still with us — it is greatly appreci-ated that they’re remembering it,” she said.

Chris Fields, a now-retired Oklahoma City firefighter cap-tured in an Associated Press Pu-litzer Prize winning photo carry-ing fatally injured Baylee Almon from the rubble of the building, agreed.

“I think it’s important that we don’t ever forget,” Fields said.

“Anything to honor the sacrifice of those victims and survivors I welcome with open arms.”

Two men were convicted in the bombing. Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001; co-conspira-tor Terry Nichols remains behind bars, serving a life sentence.

Kari Watkins, executive di-rector of the Oklahoma City Na-tional Memorial Museum, wor-ries that people will forget what happened and that the bomb-ing has been overshadowed by events such as the Sept. 11 terror attacks and mass shootings, in-cluding one in Las Vegas in 2017 that was the deadliest in modern U.S. history.

“It’s our goal, it’s our mission to keep the story going. ... Abso-lutely it’s hard. Other things have happened since this happened here,” Watkins said.

Other commemorations this year include the NBA’s Okla-homa City Thunder providing free admission once monthly to the museum and wearing special uniforms at some games. The Thunder also presented families of the victims with a medallion depicting the survivor tree, a scarred American elm that with-stood the blast, and replicas of uniform jerseys with the names of the victims on the back and the number 95, for the year the bombing occurred.

Coverdale said she appreciates what the team has done.

“After all these 25 years, they’re the ones that have comforted us the most,” Coverdale said. “They remember what happened to us that day.”

DAVID CRARYAssociated Press

PHOENIX — Maria Chavira, a senior administrator in the Diocese of Phoenix, says Span-ish-speaking Catholic parishes in her area are “bursting at the seams” and celebrates the emer-gence of Hispanics as the largest ethnic component of the church nationwide.

Throughout the Southwest, where the surge has been dra-matic, Roman Catholic leaders are excited by the possibilities — and well aware of daunting challenges.

Hispanics now account for 40% of all U.S. Catholics, and a solid majority of school-age Catholics. Yet Hispanic Ameri-cans are strikingly underrepre-sented in Catholic schools and in the priesthood — accounting for less than 19% of Catholic school enrollment and only about 3% of U.S.-based priests.

In the Phoenix diocese, there are than 700,000 Hispanics out of a total of 1.2 million Catholics. Yet out of more than 200 priests, Catholic researchers counted only seven American-born His-panics.

Extensive efforts are underway to narrow the demographic gaps. They have been highlighted in a nearly completed four-year study by U.S. Catholic bishops seeking to strengthen the church’s en-gagement with Hispanics.

“We have a lot of opportuni-ties,” said Chavira, who oversees the Hispanic Mission Office and other departments in the Phoe-nix diocese. “There may be a lit-

tle turbulence ahead, but we’re going to make it.”

Chavira is among more than two dozen Catholic leaders and activists who shared their thoughts about the Hispanic Catholic phenomenon with The Associated Press, some in tele-phone interviews and others face-to-face during a reporting trip to Arizona and Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

Evidence of the change can be seen each December, when thousands of Hispanic Catholics dance and march in downtown Phoenix to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe. It can be seen in fast-growing, heavily Hispanic communities in Phoenix’s west-ern suburbs.

Nationwide, more than 1,200 Catholic schools have closed in the past decade, usually under financial stress.

Hundreds of parishes have closed in the Northeast and Midwest. The clergy sex abuse

scandal has forced more than 20 dioceses across the U.S. into bankruptcy since 2004, most re-cently in the Northeast.

The scandals haven’t spared the Southwest. The dioceses in Tuc-son, Arizona, and in Santa Fe and Gallup, New Mexico, are among those that declared bankruptcy.

But in states along the Mex-ico border, past scandals don’t diminish the excitement over a future Hispanic-accented Cath-olic church. More than 400 new parishes have opened since 1970 in the border states, and many Hispanic Catholics were elated by the recent election of Mex-ican-born Los Angeles Arch-bishop José Gómez as the first Hispanic president of the bish-ops’ conference.

“It’s the tale of two churches,” said Hosffman Ospino, a profes-sor of Hispanic ministry at Bos-ton College. “In Boston, I see a Catholicism that’s very reserved. In the Southwest it’s very public,

very expressive.”A major challenge for the

Catholic hierarchy: persuading more Hispanic young men to be-come priests. Diego Piña Lopez, 30, of Tucson, devoted his life to the Catholic tenet of supporting the dignity of all people. Grow-ing up, he sometimes considered becoming a priest, but opted in-stead to pursue graduate degrees in social work and public health. Why not the priesthood? “I wanted to have a family,” he said.

By the latest count of the bishops’ conference, there are about 37,300 U.S.-based priests. Among them are roughly 3,000 Hispanics.

One problem, said Ospino, is that Hispanics in the U.S. have lagged behind other groups in re-gard to college-level education, limiting the pool of young men qualified for the seminary.

But even as the second and third generations of many His-panic immigrant families do pursue higher education, other factors are at play.

“With those generations, there’s extremely heavy pres-sure to think more about eco-nomic success than the glory of God,” said Daniel Flores, bishop of Brownsville, Texas. “We need to teach them the concept of ser-vice, rather than you need to earn as much as you can.”

Overall enrollment in Catho-lic schools in the U.S. has plum-meted in recent decades, from more than 5.2 million in the 1960s to about 1.73 million this year. Of the current students, only 18.5% are Hispanic.

Domestic terror attack remembered through art

KEN MILLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Images of Aaron Coverdale, left, and Elijah Coverdale adorn a wall of the home of their grandmother, Jannie Coverdale, on Feb. 27 in Oklahoma City. The boys were killed in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.

AP FILE PHOTO

The north side of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was torn off after the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Catholic priest numbers dismal among US Hispanics

DARIO LOPEZ MILLS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sister Maris Stella Vaugham teaches a religion class at St. John Paul II Catholic School on Feb. 26 in Phoenix. In the western suburbs of Phoenix, enrollment is surging at this new Catholic high school built to serve a fast-growing, heavily Hispanic community.

MARI A. SCHAEFERTribune News Service

PHILADELPHIA — It’s First Holy Communion season.

For months, Catholic children across the country have been pre-paring to receive, for the first time, the Holy Eucharist, traditionally the third of the faith’s seven sac-raments and usually dispensed in the spring. The day is often filled with family gatherings, parties, and photos of the new communi-cants decked out in classic white outfits to mark the special occa-sion.

But the budget-busting cost of those dresses, veils, suits, and shoes can run into the hundreds of dollars.

Now some parishes are creat-ing “communion closets,” rooms filled with donated communion clothing and accessories that can be borrowed for free. The con-cept’s appeal is about more than saving money, say parents — it’s also about being practical. Why buy something new when you can reuse something that was worn for only a few hours?

“We thought there was an ab-solute need for this,” said Colleen Sharp, 52, the director of parish services at St. Katherine of Sienna Church in Torresdale, Pennsylva-nia, who launched its communion closet last year. “We probably have 80 suits and dresses.”

The collection outgrew its ini-tial location in the convent and is now housed in the church base-ment where the clothes are dis-played on three large clothing racks. Nearby restrooms — one for girls and one for boys — double as changing areas.

Sharp built the inventory by re-questing clothing donations from about 10 area parishes, whose members were then invited to participate in the borrowing. The only cost to families? After using the clothing, they’re asked to have it professionally dry-cleaned be-fore returning it.

Vicki Kay, a mother of three in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, de-cided to check out the inventory before heading to a retail store with her son, Dominic, 10, to buy him a communion suit.

“I feel like it’s senseless to spend $40 to $50, and my other son,” who’s 7, “might not be able to wear it,” said Kay, recalling her own First Communion and how she ripped the lace on her dress at the party after the ceremony.

Dominic was pushing for a blue suit, but Kay — a traditionalist when it comes to First Commu-nion outfits — wouldn’t have it. It had to be white.

Sure enough, at St. Katherine’s, Kay found a suit that was not only a perfect fit for Dominic but also pleased him. Now all he needed was a new shirt and tie (she hoped to rent him some white shoes).

“It’s like a four-piece suit,” he’ll have, once he gets the tie, said Kay. “He’s thinking, like, he’s ‘the man’ right now.”

St Katherine’s is not the only area parish to offer a Communion Closet.

In Ambler, St. Anthony of Padua opened one this year after taking over the inventory from Holy Mar-tyrs Catholic Church in Oreland, which discontinued the service. The closet’s growing inventory of-fers about 60 outfits — girls’ white dresses and veils and boys’ suits (in white and other colors), all in “a variety of second-grade sizes,” said Angela Lawlor, the director of religious education.

“It’s very much brand new,” Lawlor said about the idea, and “families who donate clothing are happy that something they used is going to good use for another family.”

“No money is exchanged,” she said, though St. Anthony’s closet, like St. Katherine’s, also asks that items be professionally dry-cleaned before return.

Speaking of St. Katherine’s, the parish Communion Closet is about to get a boost from Meghan Harnett, a junior at Gwynedd Mercy Academy who was looking for a way to give back to her com-munity.

The Lansdale teen approached school officials about conducting a clothing drive to benefit St. Kath-erine’s closet. She’s in the process of collecting donated communion frocks from her Gwynedd Mercy classmates.

“Rather it going to waste in a closet or throwing it away, why not give it to another girl or boy?” said Harnett, 17. “If it’s still in good condition, just pass it down.”

Catholics turn to ‘communion closets’ for white dresses, suits

Passing it down