Orange County offers none of that. Its tiny Black population is spread out, meaning there\u2019s no parish that Black Catholics can call theirs. The one church named after a Black saint, St. Martin de Porres, is in Yorba Linda, where Black residents make up just 1% of the population.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go into churches, and the angels are always white with blue eyes,\u201d said Gee Padilla, the 46-year-old head of the Knights of Peter Claver O.C. \u201cAnd the devil is always dark-skinned.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prince Powe, left, Gee Padilla, Gregory Herr and Ron Haynes pray before their meeting at Raised By Lions Coffee Roasters on May 22 in Tustin. The men are officers of the Knights of Peter Claver Council #406, Orange County\u2019s local chapter of the oldest Black Catholic lay-led organization.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Members have heard stories from Black Catholics who were told that communion wasn\u2019t meant for them, since they must be Protestant. They know local families who attend Mass in L.A. because they don\u2019t feel comfortable in their own communities.<\/p>\n
Although the Diocese of Orange doesn\u2019t keep demographic figures on its congregants, the Knights of Peter Claver leaders shook their heads with wearied smiles about how few Black Catholics they\u2019ve met at their own parishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust two in 11 years,\u201d said Powe, who attends St. Vincent de Paul in Huntington Beach. \u201cAnd I just met one this past Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe three,\u201d said Ron Haynes, 66. The Virginia native and lifelong Catholic works as an aerospace engineer and attends St. Anne\u2019s in Seal Beach. He found out about the Knights of Peter Claver from a white priest.<\/p>\n
When news got out about the formation of a local chapter, \u201cpeople were saying, \u2018Orange County, California \u2014 they want to do that there?\u2019\u201d said Gregory Herr, a retired inspector with the Irvine Ranch Water District. \u201cI can count the Black parishioners at St. Angela Merici [in Brea] with one hand. Maybe two.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cIt\u2019s a daunting thing to figure out what role we can play in here with limited manpower.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in their own small way, the Knights of Peter Claver O.C. are succeeding.<\/p>\n
The group cosponsored a 2023 gospel Mass at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove and marched in a procession a few weeks ago that decried the immigration raids terrorizing large swaths of Catholic Southern California<\/a>. When the Knights held a fundraiser with a goal of $3,000, Haynes said they were \u201cshocked\u201d to reach nearly $5,000.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even get that type of support from my friends, let alone a stranger,\u201d Padilla joked.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone believed in us,\u201d Haynes replied.<\/p>\n The group numbers only 20 \u2014 double the starting membership. It includes non-Black members, who are allowed in other chapters but aren\u2019t a common sight. Padilla is Latino, and Herr recalls asking \u201cif a white guy like me\u201d could join. <\/p>\n \u201cI could sense the agape right off the page,\u201d said Herr, using the Greek term for the selfless love preached by Jesus, to explain why he wanted in.<\/p>\n Padilla\u2019s road to the group seems the most preordained. Raised in South Gate, he listened to a podcast a few years ago hosted by a Black priest \u2014 \u201cI didn\u2019t even know there were Black American Catholics,\u201d admitted Padilla, an ad executive.<\/p>\n Soon after, Padilla visited Colombia. Looking for a church to pray in after finding out his girlfriend was pregnant, he stumbled upon the Sanctuary of St. Peter Claver in Cartagena, which displays its namesake\u2019s remains.<\/p>\n \u201cI always kept a torch out for him after that,\u201d said Padilla, who attends St. Bruno\u2019s in Whittier and joined the Knights of Peter Claver in O.C. after reading about it in a Catholic publication. \u201cI called Brother Greg, and my brothers welcomed me with open arms.\u201d<\/p>\n Father Greg Walgenbach<\/a>, a founding member, praised the Knights for piercing through the \u201cbubbles\u201d too many Orange County residents live in. <\/p>\n Black Catholics \u201chadn\u2019t been included\u201d as publicly in Orange County Catholic life before, \u201cbut they made their own way and created an inclusive community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Walgenbach, who is white, brought up the Creole heritage of Pope Leo XIV<\/a>, who made history this year as the first U.S.-born pope<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s often a sense in religious studies that Christianity is a white man\u2019s religion,\u201d said the priest, the longtime director of the Diocese of Orange\u2019s Office of Life, Justice and Peace. \u201cBut we need to recover ways of talking about our ways and history and saints that don\u2019t just flatten all that richness but really accentuate the richness we have in our community, and that\u2019s what the Knights of Peter Claver do.\u201d<\/p>\n Gee Padilla takes notes during an officers meeting of the Orange County chapter of the Knights of Peter Claver.<\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The O.C. members hope that interest in Pope Leo\u2019s background might inspire more Catholic men to find their group.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I looked at Pope Leo\u2019s mom, she looked just like the people in Mobile,\u201d a beaming Powe said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, I was more excited that he was an American,\u201d Haynes replied. \u201cWhat does that mean for Catholics like me?\u201d<\/p>\n At the Tustin coffee shop, the Knights prayed for guidance from God on their goals for 2025 and beyond. Haynes suggested that the Knights weave themselves into the fabric of O.C. Catholic life with activities like volunteering for Eucharistic ministry or buying textbooks for seminarians.<\/p>\n \u201cJust the visuals to be a Black Catholic doing these things that help all, it\u2019ll show people who we are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Haynes and Powe seemed wary when Herr suggested that the group take part in more anti-racism actions and invoked the phrase \u201cBlack Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll lives matter in the church,\u201d Haynes replied.<\/p>\n \u201cI think as soon as you say that, Brother Greg,\u201d Powe said kindly, \u201cears are gonna perk up \u2014 and not in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n Padilla suggested volunteering as lectors in Masses across the Orange diocese. The men all nodded.<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d Herr said, \u201cwe just hatched a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Crow infested all parts of Prince Powe\u2019s life when he was growing up in Mobile, Ala., in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":166499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[95712,95705,1582,276,95707,95713,95711,95706,95709,5169,15738,2961,224,5337,95710,1036,59981,95704,95703,95708],"class_list":{"0":"post-166498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-black-catholic-man","9":"tag-black-catholics","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-church-attendance","13":"tag-diocese","14":"tag-enslaved-people","15":"tag-gee-padilla","16":"tag-gregory-herr","17":"tag-group","18":"tag-knights","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-o-c","23":"tag-orange-county","24":"tag-parish","25":"tag-peter-claver","26":"tag-prince-powe","27":"tag-ron-haynes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115072508681890745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n