A Bishop’s Journey

The path that would take Gerald Barnes, bishop of the Diocese of San Bernardino, into the highest echelons of American Catholicism began with a flash of anger at the church.

The mom and pop grocery store owned by Barnes’ parents, George and Aurora, was a gathering spot in their racially diverse Boyle Heights neighborhood in East Los Angeles. Every Sunday after church (whether Baptist, Methodist or Catholic) people would drop by to chat, listen to a ballgame on the radio or, if they couldn’t read, have Aurora decipher a letter for them.

But on one Sunday in 1962, the neighbors were coming in to stock up on canned goods. At home, they were filling their bathtubs with emergency water. They didn’t understand what the Cuban missile crisis was, but they were scared. They had heard the world might end.

The Catholics of the neighborhood, mostly Latinos, like Barnes and his family, kept asking, “Who is this Cruz Chavez?”--which is how the name of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had been passed from neighbor to neighbor.

Barnes, then 16, was furious that these people had just returned from services where they had been offered no information or comfort about a world event.

“I got so angry with the church,” Barnes recalled. “I said ‘When is the church going to help educate its people?’ And an uncle said to me ‘What are you going to do about it?’ ”

That challenge led Barnes to believe that he should be a teacher and, eventually, headed him toward the priesthood. But the route was anything but direct.

As a seminarian in the mid-1970s, Barnes found himself making many of his teachers uncomfortable by asking so many questions about how the church saw its role in society. At one point, a seminary in Ohio asked him to leave, he recalls.

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‘I knew my relationship with God was solid, but I didn’t know where God was taking me,” he says. Eventually, after repeatedly sending out letters seeking a post, Barnes was accepted by the diocese in San Antonio as an associate pastor. He stayed there until 1992, when he received a letter from Pope John Paul II ordaining him as auxiliary bishop for San Bernardino.

In 1996, Barnes was appointed the bishop for the diocese, which covers San Bernardino and Riverside counties and has more than 1 million Catholics. There, Barnes continues to define his role mainly as “a teacher,” and he defines the mission of his diocese “to empower people so they can take their rightful place.”

In addition to serving as one of the 281 active bishops who are the chief administrators of the church in America, Barnes is also chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Hispanic Affairs Committee, a group that defines the church’s position on issues such as immigration policy and employment practices.

The bishops have taken several controversial positions--including opposition in 1994 to California’s Proposition 187, which sought to cut off government benefits to illegal immigrants. But Barnes seems to have few enemies.

Barnes, whose last name was passed down from a grandfather who was half-Irish, draws on his roots in this role.

“Being Hispanic, I know the needs of my people in church and at business and home,” he said. “But I have a foot in both cultures. I am a bishop to everyone, not ‘the Hispanic bishop.’ ”

In his daily work, Barnes still draws on lessons he learned growing up in East L.A.

Sitting down to lunch at the home of a parishioner during a visit to Cathedral City, Barnes spoke in Spanish, the family’s native language. He ate carne asada, drank wine and during the course of the meal drew each person at the crowded table into conversation with a meeting of eyes or a quiet question.

The skill, he explained later, is one that he did not pick up at the seminary, but at his own family’s dining room table.

“Coming from a large family, I know what it is to be left out,” he said. “I learned my listening skills at dinners growing up.”

As a child, Barnes dreamed of being a diplomat. He wanted to travel to exotic-sounding places. He graduated from Roosevelt High School and as a young adult received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Cal State L.A., teaching high school one year before pursuing a course as a priest.

His field of study--the affairs of the world--does not seem at odds to Barnes with his work in the church.

“The church exists for the world. Jesus says ‘Go into the world.’ We have responsibility to bring the values of our faith into the world around us.

“I once saw my dad pick up a wino and wash and feed him. I grew up in a neighborhood where people of different races and faiths mingled and prayed together,” he said. “These are things you don’t forget.”