It’s a foggy November Sunday and Archbishop John Vlazny, simply by nature, is purveying sunshine inside an Oregon church.

“May God’s blessings flow down on you like good gravy on mashed potatoes,” says the slim and impish 71-year-old church leader. He’s quoting a nun to the people of St. Francis Parish in Roy, who, he adds, have served him some fine spuds in the recent past. The crowd guffaws.

A summary of Archbishop Vlazny’s 25 years as a bishop may highlight issues dramatic, public or even controversial. He has, after all, been forced to deal with Oregon’s assisted suicide law, discrimination against immigrants, advancing abortion rights and a priest sex-abuse scandal.

But amid and between the news-making events, John Vlazny has always been primarily a pastoral man. He visits churches great and small, blesses schools, tells jokes, gives counsel and hears confessions.

Most Catholics notice that he has maintained joy and faith, which tend to spread to those he meets, if by no other means than his stampeding laughter. And as a priest and a bishop, making disciples has been his central mission.

“The purpose of the church is not to make the world Catholic but to bring the gospel into the world,” he said in an interview in 2006. “We can contribute to make this a more just and loving society.”

During his first press conference in Portland, he told reporters, “Jesus wasn’t sitting around in church.”

The man who would become the joyful archbishop was nurtured in the Midwest immigrant culture of the Great Depression, where the Catholic Church was life’s social and spiritual hub.

In 1937, Chicago was a city of neighborhoods where Catholic churches proudly lifted their steeples above the smokestacks of packinghouses and steel mills.
Chicago was home to significant numbers of Germans, Irish, Poles, Bohemians, Swedes, Italians, Lithuanians, Greeks, Slovenes, Slovaks, Polish and Russian Jews. Among the newest groups to leave their imprint on the urban landscape were African Americans who had come north in search of better jobs and housing as part of the “Great Migration” during World War I, and Mexicans who were putting down roots in South Chicago.

In the 1930s, the city was more a mosaic than a melting pot, yet its Catholic churches and schools were powerful reminders that religion continued to shape communal life for the children and grandchildren of immigrants.

In all of Chicago’s older industrial neighborhoods during the Depression, competition for work remained fierce and there were few unions to protect men and women against layoffs or reductions in wages and hours. In 1937, stockyards workers were just beginning to organize, and on the Southeast Side, Republic steelworkers fought bitter battles with police in what became known as the Memorial Day massacre.

Like so many children of immigrants, the archbishop’s father, John Vlazny, was familiar with the precarious nature of family life. Hattie, his wife, had died suddenly, leaving him and a young daughter, Marcella, alone. He later married Marie Brezina who would bear him a son and a daughter.

The Brezina and Vlazny families had strong ties to the old Bohemian neighborhood known as Pilsen on Chicago’s West Side, and to the Czech community that had formed around St. John Nepomucene Church just blocks from Charles Comiskey’s new White Sox ball park on 35th Street. A successful businessman, John Vlazny was a pharmacist who operated a drug store in a substantial three-story corner building at 18th and Throop streets. But the most prominent structure in the neighborhood was St. Procopius Church, whose steeple could be seen for blocks and whose bells reminded Bohemian immigrants of the churches of their childhood. Built on a grand scale and dedicated in 1883, it dwarfed nearby Protestant churches and missions along Racine Avenue.

As happened in neighborhoods throughout the city, Catholic sisters created hospitals to care for the needs of families, from cradle to grave. St. Anthony de Padua Hospital near Douglas Park, where Archbishop Vlazny was born, had been founded by the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart from Joliet, Illinois, in 1896 and they welcomed “all patients regardless of religion and nationality.”

Despite living in a city of more than three million, families such as the Brezinas and Vlaznys found Chicago to be more like a small town. One of the reasons was the extensive network of Catholic parishes that honeycombed the city. In Bridgeport alone there were 10 Catholic parishes within a mile square radius, each with its own distinctive identity. Although they could easily walk to the German parish of St. Anthony or the Irish parish of All Saints, Bohemian families preferred to worship at St. John Nepomucene where they could hear homilies in Czech as well as in English. This pragmatic solution to the thorny question of language ensured that immigrants felt as much at home in their neighborhood churches as did their American-born children.

For couples such as Marie and John Vlazny, moving out of “the old neighborhood” meant becoming members of English-speaking parishes. The transition was hardly traumatic since all Masses in the days before Vatican II were celebrated in Latin, with devotions in English. Within months of his baptism at the predominantly Irish parish of St. Cecilia at 45th Place and Wells Street, young John Vlazny was living in St. Gall Parish in the Gage Park neighborhood where the Brezina family had put down roots at 5705 S. Troy Street.

In much the same way that chain migration from Europe had contributed to the growth and development of Chicago’s industrial neighborhoods, the pattern repeated itself in emerging residential neighborhoods that were like suburbs of the stockyards. The Vlazny bungalow at 6011 S. Francisco Avenue and the other neat brick homes on the street not only represented the American dream of home-ownership, but they ensured a form of neighborliness that Catholic families had come to value highly.

To move from a densely populated neighborhood such as Bridgeport where homes were heated by coal or wood-burning stoves to a home with radiator heat and gleaming tile bathrooms constituted a high point in the lives of Chicagoans. “Bungalow Belt” neighborhoods such as Gage Park were developed at a time when few families owned automobiles, and yet residents enjoyed easy access to street car lines which took them to work or downtown. For children coming of age, a bungalow’s back yard and the sidewalk in front offered unparalleled opportunities to play without the danger of being hit by delivery wagons. Equally significant, children could walk to school and to church on their own and to the commercial districts with their small stores and theaters.

Although it was located in the city of Chicago, St. Gall Parish had begun as a mission in 1890 and remained sparsely settled for the next 30 years. Parishioners, including the Brezina and Vlazny families, understood the importance of constructing modern church and school quarters and yet decade after decade, it was the school that took precedence. The arrival of the Sister Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary from Beaverville, Ill., in 1924 was perhaps the most important event in the young parish’s history. Through their dedication, enrollment in the school steadily increased and in 1935 an addition was built. Visible to all travelers on busy Kedzie Avenue was the admonition carved in stone, “Teach Me Goodness, Discipline, Knowledge, O Lord.”

St. Gall Parish reflected the Catholic Church’s enduring commitment to education. From the 19th century on, virtually all parishes in the city supported their own grammar schools and in the 1920s, Catholic high schools had begun to emerge on the city’s south, west, and north sides. Another important development was the opening of Quigley Preparatory Seminary in 1918 just a few blocks from Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral. The Gothic structure quickly became a landmark on the North Side and, more importantly, the school of choice for young men who hoped eventually to be ordained priests.

It was no small matter of pride that despite the Great Depression, in 1937, 259 Catholic grammar schools in the city kept their doors open, educating 130,000 students. Significantly, at a time when many children went to work after eighth grade, nearly 6,000 young men and women were continuing their education in Catholic high schools in Chicago. Catholic parents, priests, nuns, and bishops regarded education as an investment in the future, and although money was always in short supply, every effort was made to ensure that Catholic schools compared favorably with public institutions. One of the highlights of Catholic life in Chicago in the 1930s, for example, was the annual football rivalry between Leo High School and the winner of the Public School League for the championship at Soldier Field that drew thousands of spectators.

Sport was an early pleasure in John Vlazny’s life. He still pays close attention to his hometown Chicago White Sox and is able to cite statistics by memory. He recalls listening to the Sox on the radio with his father into the night. More often than not, he hit the sack dejected over yet another loss.

He occasionally “helped” his father in the family drug store, he now jokes. Young John would show up for work, get a candy bar, a comic book, make a milkshake for himself and relax.

On Wednesdays, a day off from the pharmacy, the father would take the family on outings. His mother baked Bohemian treats and served roast pork, sauerkraut, and dumplings for special dinners. A daily fare was soup with her homemade noodles. Guests were almost always invited to stay for dinner. Often, it was Msgr. James Hishen of St. Gall’s, a man who was close to the family and a strong influence on the Vlazny children.

The Vlaznys’ extended family visited often, and one cousin even lived with them for a time. In return, they traveled to Michigan in the summers to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins there.

The grandparents didn’t speak much English. Czech was the language for much conversation during visits.

John Vlazny, Sr. was a religious man who impressed upon his children the importance of the church in their lives.

John Jr. would play priest with his younger sister Marion; she was the server. The pair also created an altar to Mary each May. Years later, Marion (and her husband Dennis) would characterize her brother as someone who took church seriously and yet was fun-loving. He always saw the bright side of things, they said.

Parish histories rarely include the names of women responsible for nurturing vocations to the priesthood, but Archbishop Vlazny can still remember his first-grade teacher, Sister Madeline Sophie, and Sister Mary Magdalene, who was in charge of the altar servers, and he credits Sister Virginia Marie and Sister Mary George as being “influential in my life and vocation.”

Young John, at 18, had just entered the seminary when his father died of cancer. Supportive relatives and neighbors got the family through.

At the time he began his studies at Quigley Preparatory Seminary, St. Gall Parish had begun to experience its greatest growth. Douglas Bukowski, a historian who grew up near the Vlazny home in the 1950s, remembers St. Gall’s as “a League of Nations neighborhood . . . where Poles joined with Germans, Italians, the Irish, and Lithuanians to live together without bloodshed or fisticuffs.” And before long, the parish would have a new church at the corner of 55th and Kedzie Avenue that “pointed to the future, not the Gothic past favored in Bridgeport.”

Dedicated in 1958, when 21-year-old John Vlazny graduated from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, St. Gall Church was regarded as one of the first modern churches in Chicago after World War II. Nicknamed the “Hishen Hilton,” after the legendary pastor, it symbolized the key role of the Catholic Church in neighborhood life.

Father Vlazny returned from Rome in 1962. He had studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University and been ordained with men who would be lifelong friends, including a Californian named William Levada, who would eventually become a cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican.

The Chicago Father Vlazny found then had much in common with the city in which his father was born in 1896. Newcomers from Puerto Rico and the Philippines were changing the face of older ethnic parishes on Chicago’s North Side while Mexican families were putting down roots in the old stockyards and steel mill neighborhoods. On the West and South Sides, Irish parishes experienced dramatic racial change throughout the 1960s and the idea of integration remained elusive.

An author recounts in his memoir, Pictures of Home, the spirit of progressive Catholicism that characterized St. Gall’s throughout its history was sorely tested in the 1960s as a result of racial change in neighborhoods to the east. When the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. attempted to march through Marquette Park in the summer of 1966 to dramatize Chicago’s segregated housing market, he was hit in the head with a rock.

Young Father Vlazny’s childhood in one of Chicago’s most multi-ethnic neighborhoods and his renewed appreciation for the universality of the church, thanks to his student days in Rome, stood him in good stead in his various assignments. After a year at St. Paul of the Cross in suburban Park Ridge, he spent five years at St. Clement Parish in Lincoln Park. Now one of the parishes favored by young Chicago professionals, in 1963 St. Clement’s and its surrounding neighborhood was a long way from gentrification. The once fashionable German parish had recently closed its girls’ high school and was faced with the challenge of keeping its grammar school open.

He also served at the minor seminary in the 1960s and 70s.

“We worked together like brothers at the minor seminary,” says retired Archbishop James Keleher of Kansas City, Kansas. “He was always assisting me and making me look good.”

Of all his assignments in the Chicago archdiocese, St. Aloysius in Humboldt Park left a deep impression on the future archbishop. When he arrived in 1968, he found one of the city’s oldest ethnic parishes worshiping in a modern sacred space. Although not as elaborate as St. Gall’s, the new St. Aloysius reflected hope in the future of the parish and the neighborhood. Staying put at a time when Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues were leaving Chicago was no small feat and it spoke volumes about the Catholic Church’s urban roots and commitment to the city. Not only did St. Aloysius take an active role in the East Humboldt Park Conservation Community Council, but the parish worked closely with its Catholic neighbors, St. Elizabeth Hospital, founded in 1887 by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, and Josephinum High School, established in 1890 by the Sisters of Christian Charity.

As much as he embraced parishioners, they adored him. The young adult choir described itself unofficially as the “Vlaznyites,” even giving their Spanish-speaking pastor a “Vlaznyite” t-shirt when he left the parish in 1981 to serve as rector of the college seminary.

At St. Aloysius, Father Vlazny experienced close-up the genius that has been the Chicago Catholic experience — welcoming a new group, in this case Puerto Rican Catholics, while continuing to meet the needs of Poles, Filipinos, Germans and African Americans. Long before it became fashionable to talk about diversity, Catholic parishes led the way. It’s an old old story, and one that the pastor’s parents and grandparents would have understood by heart.

When Father Vlazny left his post as rector of Niles College Seminary in 1983 for a larger assignment, students were noticeably upset by the news.

“He gave me a different perspective of priesthood,” a seminarian said at the time. “Before I had just seen priests in the parish. But now I also see priests as administrators and leaders of a larger community, as people who are more involved in decision making.”

That year, his joy and leadership won him an ultimate kudos. Chicago Archbishop Joseph Bernardin named him an auxiliary bishop.

The new bishop wrote in the Catholic New World newspaper that “care, concern and effective leadership” are essential components for his new position.

While serving as episcopal vicar, Bishop Vlazny worked closely with the Office of the Hispanic Apostolate, using his Spanish, one of a set of languages in which he is fluent. He participated in several caucuses that addressed the variety of needs in ministering to Hispanics in the archdiocese.

“We need to have more clearly defined and identifiable places in Lake County where Hispanics know they can go for all their ministerial needs,” Bishop Vlazny told the Catholic New World, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

He saw the dearth of priests who speak Spanish and so developed lay ministers to give aid.

“Each day it seemed that he had three or four meetings, or presentations, or religious ceremonies; and I would think to myself, why would anyone want to be a bishop?” says Father John Thinnes, who lived with the new auxiliary bishop in the northern part of the Archdiocese of Chicago. “Come 10 p.m. or so as I would be ready to retire, the good bishop would just be getting home, but not to relax. He always had to finish a presentation and/or a homily for the following day. The dedication and the excellence he brought to the work of his ministry was always very impressive.”
As is typical, Bishop Vlazny was able to point out the humor of his new role.

“Being a bishop is like being a grandparent,” he told the Catholic New World. “When you come into a parish for a confirmation or other liturgical function, it is fun and everyone is nice to you, and then you go away and leave the pastor with all the problems.”

It was not long before his dedication and amiability led to yet another mission. There was an opening for a bishop in southern Minnesota, where his pastoral skills would become legend.

When Auxiliary Bishop Vlazny was made Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Minn. in 1987, members of St. Aloysius Parish in Chicago wanted to show support for their beloved former pastor.

About 75 of the largely immigrant community chartered a bus and made the five-hour trip north for the installation ceremony. The city dwellers had trouble finding the right place, so were late.

When they eventually flowed into the room, they all headed straight for their man, who embraced and welcomed each one warmly. Everyone wanted a photo with the new bishop.

“I never was a chancery person. The Church always has to be missionary,” the new spiritual leader told a reporter then.

Over the next 10 years, he became known for getting out among the people he served — not just to make an appearance for a special liturgy or diocesan event, but to talk with them and listen to them, to teach and be taught by them.

The Diocese of Winona encompasses Minnesota’s 20 southernmost counties and extends the width of the state, bordering Iowa in the south, Wisconsin to the east and the Dakotas to the west. The prairie grasslands of the Great Plains begin there. Rural communities are called Harmony, Blue Earth, Welcome, Magnolia and Good Thunder.

During the homily at his installation in Winona, he talked about the laity’s role in the church. “Your work, my lay brothers and sisters, no matter how tedious or energizing, is a value and an active participation in God’s creative presence among his people today. The involvement of lay people in the ministries of the Church is a marvelously welcome development.”

Their involvement increased under Bishop Vlazny’s governance.

The first order of business for the new bishop was to reorganize and strengthen the diocesan staff. Bishop Vlazny encouraged his workers to be more pro-active and he encouraged collaboration among the various offices. Part-time offices were consolidated, and some service functions transferred to Catholic Charities; some new offices — such as Youth and Family Life — were added over the years in response to diocesan needs.

Six months after his installation, Bishop Vlazny outlined his priorities for the Diocese of Winona in a column written for his diocesan newspaper, the Courier. He placed highest priority on comprehensive pastoral planning, on both the parish and diocesan levels. Faced with a dwindling number of priests to serve a ballooning Catholic population, the influx of minorities, and shifting demographics, the diocese could not afford to sit back and simply hope for the best.

“What,” the bishop asked, “will the face of Catholic southern Minnesota look like in five years? In 10? Without thoughtful planning, things will still happen to us. With planning, we can make things happen.”

Pastoral planning was nothing new — other dioceses had already begun such work — but the genuinely grassroots process designed by the bishop and his vicar general, Msgr. Gerald Mahon, made Winona’s system particularly effective. In this model, lay representatives from each parish in each deanery come together regularly to address church issues.

Bishop Vlazny and his curia also helped teachers and catechists acquire some theological and philosophical foundation.

“He appreciated the phrase that this is the ‘age of the baptized’ and reminded us often that baptism is the primary sacrament of the church,” Msgr. Mahon says. “This led him to call forth the gifts of everyone in leading this local church, and he appreciated the service and sacrifice of all the people involved in parishes across southern Minnesota.”

Another of Bishop Vlazny’s priorities for Winona was to support and strengthen rural life in southern Minnesota. “Farm foreclosures and flight to large population centers weaken our small communities, parishes, schools and threaten family life,” he wrote. “These folks need and deserve good pastoring. The Church must be with them in these troublesome times.”

He started the tradition of the “Harvest Mass,” an outdoor liturgy celebrated on a family farm in a different deanery every year.

Already intent on evangelization, which Pope John Paul had made clear was the definitive mission of the church, he created an office for the mission.

During a presentation to a group in the small town of Albert Lea, the bishop said those who have already heard the Gospel are called to bring the news of God to others.

“We as church do not exist for ourselves,” he told the group.

As pastoral as he was, it became clear that Bishop Vlazny had admirable administrative skills. He quietly managed to expand diocesan ministries while putting the diocese on a sound financial footing. Justice seemed to be behind it all. He saved a priests’ pension plan and improved benefits for diocesan employees.

Much of his work went by under the radar. But in 1994, the bishop generated considerable discussion statewide when he issued a position statement on gambling, such as bingo or other games of chance, as a source of revenue for parishes and schools. He asked Catholics to consider ending all gambling operations in which there had been an “attitudinal shift from recreation to profit.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune responded in an editorial that said, “At a time when everyone else seems driven only by a lust for greater gambling profits, the Winona statement is a rare and welcome word of compassion for the victims.”

Within a few years of arriving in Minnesota, he also had to endure the trial of a Winona priest accused of sex abuse of a minor. The accuser eventually was awarded $1 million.

Through that, the bishop persisted in his role as a teacher, presenting workshops, conducting question-and-answer sessions and leading prayer services.
In a weekly radio program that aired throughout the diocese for more than three years, he discussed every aspect of the Church, from its hierarchical structure to its position on abortion, from the significance of its sacraments to its role in shaping public policy.

He condemned abortion and euthanasia, sought greater roles for women in the Church, defended the civil rights of homosexuals, spoke out against the death penalty and urged legislation to assist private education.

He supported the Church’s teaching on women’s ordination and its rules on priestly celibacy, invoked Humanae Vitae in criticizing the contraceptive culture, and called his people to prayer and sacrifice as a way to address the world’s problems.

His convictions tended to deflate those who sought to pigeonhole him as either “conservative” or “liberal.”

He showed himself as a strong supporter of the consistent ethic of life, the seamless garment theme set forth by his friend, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.

“Bishop Vlazny won’t be a single-issue person,” said the secertary of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, noting that the bishop preferred all life issues to be dealt with as one.

Meanwhile, as a bishop, he began a ministry to the wider church. In 1993, he was elected chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Evangelization. He would also serve on committees for the North American College in Rome, priestly formation, religious life and ministry, and the third millennium. He’d become a liaison to the National Council of Catholic Women and serve as chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on the Economic Concerns of the Holy See.

Msgr. James Habiger of the Winona Diocese knew that everyone loved Bishop Vlazny. But he warned that anyone who tried to bully the bishop soon would discover that he is “steel wrapped in velvet.”

In 1997, he was asked by the Vatican to take on a yet larger mission, because church leaders knew his light should shine in an even more prominent place.

The people of the Winona Diocese were happy for him but crestfallen to see him leave for the Archdiocese of Portland, across the country. St. Mary’s University in the hills above Winona even renamed Thomas Aquinas Hall as Vlazny Hall. The kind, evangelization-minded bishop had displaced a doctor of the church, some noted with a chuckle.

After Portland Archbishop Francis George found out he would be leaving to lead the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1997, he made a trip to Cathedral School. He told the students that someone else would fill his position in Oregon. One of the youngsters thought perhaps it might be a straight trade — Archbishop George for Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan.

When Bishop John Vlazny in Winona heard that one, his laugh could almost be heard in Portland. At 60, the jogging bishop said his style was not up to an NBA fast break.

But as the new Archbishop of Portland, he would need all the skills and stamina he could muster.

Now he was spiritual leader of more than 280,000 Catholics, head of the fifth-largest school district in the state with 15,000 students, and the major influence on eight Catholic hospitals and scores of Catholic charities and other organizations. Most daunting of all, he had come to a place where the church is not heeded so much.
But as he had everywhere, Archbishop Vlazny quickly won over the hearts of Oregonians by being himself.

He penned warm thank-you notes after visiting places like small St. Anthony Parish in Waldport. He thanked the people for a beautiful Mass and a tasty supper. At St. Helen Church in Junction City, after a home-cooked meal, the archbishop picked up the accordion and led the audience in “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and the “Beer Barrel Polka.”

Meanwhile, he attended parish meals, Catholic Daugters meetings, graduations, Knights of Columbus dinners, Catholic women’s conventions and the annual tea party to benefit the seminary — all with grace and jolliness. He always was the last one to leave.

There was no mystery as to why this man was chosen for Portland. The state at the end of the Oregon Trail had a legendary percentage of religiously unaffiliated residents. These rugged individuals, the Vatican reasoned, might respond well to the outward focus of a man who really believes the gospel is, at least, a tremendous benefit to society.

In his installation homily in Portland, Archbishop Vlazny urged a welcoming spirit in parishes and asked the laity to remember that their evangelizing mission is intended primarily for activities and relationships outside the church.

Without wasting a moment, the new spiritual leader traveled around the large archdiocese and presided at Masses from Astoria to Medford. He was so popular in Medford that Sacred Heart Parish sold video tapes of his visit afterward.
He would also visit Vietnamese, Korean, African American and Polish churches and get a hero’s welcome.

“We are of all kinds, all sizes and all shapes,” Archbishop Vlazny said in 1998, summing up his ecclesiology. “We have rich folks, we have poor folks, we have smart folks, we have not-so-smart folks. We represent all the marvels of humankind . . . We are all sinners and all saints. But God likes to take us especially when we are at our worst. And he turns us around.”

In Oregon, the challenges started soon for the new archbishop.
Just months before his installation, Oregonians affirmed their choice to make physician-assisted suicide legal. The practice was unthinkable in the Catholic culture of the Midwest.

And things had turned ugly in the campaign, with anti-Catholic rhetoric abounding. Sometimes, the weapons were heftier than words: Not long before he arrived, vandals threw a chunk of concrete through a window at St. Mary Parish office in Corvallis, also defacing signs calling for repeal of assisted suicide.

“Are we so obsessed with personal autonomy and control that we may very well plummet into depths we cannot even imagine?” he wrote. “Many have expressed a dread about what will happen when the power over life and death may be put into the hands of a society that is driven by economics, expedience and efficiency, a society that flees from suffering, weakness or limitations of any kind.”

The archbishop called on the church to redouble its care for the sick and dying. Every lethal prescription, he said, confronts us with our failure to offer compassionate care. The deaths, he admitted, filled him with sadness and shame.

Soon, the archbishop shared a stage with retired Sen. Mark Hatfield at the opening of an assisted-care facility, one of three to start during those years. The new projects constituted the church’s answer to assisted suicide and indicated that this Catholic leader would respond to troubles with common sense and compassion.

One of Archbishop Vlazny’s first acts outside a church venue was attending a right to life rally at the Oregon Capitol. He would go annually and took other chances to speak out for the unborn.

During election years, he let pro-choice Catholic officials and candidates know they held untenable positions. “Catholic politicians can’t have it both ways,” he wrote in 2002. “Actions always speak louder than words.”

As the 2004 presidential election approached, and one of the candidates was a Catholic who backed abortion rights, Archbishop Vlazny put the responsibility back on the shoulders of the dissenting public figures, saying they themselves should refrain from Communion.

“The reception of Holy Communion is a sign that a person not only seeks union with God but also desires to live in communion with the church,” he wrote.
Aware that he had a wider audience than Catholics, and that Catholics back up doctrine with reason, he often accentuated logic and common sense.

“Oregon law requires parents to accept responsibility for their child’s well-being when it comes to tattoos, field trips, or even taking an aspirin at school,” he said, arguing for a parental notification law for abortions on minors. “An abortion is obviously a much more serious matter.”

This April, he devoted a Sentinel column to shedding light on Planned Parenthood, which is building a clinic in Portland’s African-American neighborhood.

“The so-called ‘health and education services’ to be provided in that facility would only destroy more human lives and promote promiscuous behavior on the part of young people,” he wrote.

In October, he’d had enough of church teaching being flaunted. He invited Catholics to attend Mass at St. Mary Cathedral as a spiritual answer to an abortion rights political benefit dinner being hosted that evening by Gov. Ted Kulongoski in Portland.

“This is a source of embarrassment for our church and a scandal for the Catholic community,” the archbishop said. “For a Catholic community,” the archbishop said. “For a Catholic governor to host an event of this sort seems a deliberate dissent from the teachings of the Church.”

In 2002, as researchers began to announce feats of cloning in animals, the archbishop said the heart of the problem with cloning is “the relentless advance of science without a corresponding concern for the ethical implications.” Humans, he said, are not commodities.

“Certainly we want to help those who are suffering, but we cannot use a good end to justify an evil means,” the archbishop wrote as the stem cell debate was reaching a peak in 2006. “Sometimes people forget in the discussion of human stem cells that we are actually dealing with the very beginnings of human life. . . . Size doesn’t matter. As small as these human embryos may be, they deserve our protection, because they are human.”

In his first year, even while he stood up for the culture of life, Archbishop Vlazny laid plans for evangelization. Evangelized Catholics, he reasoned, will bring the gospel into society.

He said the faithful are to do three things: “Go, and make disciples, welcome other people to the church, and bring the good news to the people where we live.”

In May 1998, he presided at the first Mass ever in Portland’s main park on the waterfront. It was part of the Cinco de Mayo celebration and the Eucharist had never before been so public in Portland.

“To be a good Christian, one needs to participate in some aspect of the service ministry,” the archbishop said, standing in front of a life-sized painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. “At home, at work, in our neighborhoods, the Christian attitude should be one of generosity and service.”

Keeping up an effort to bring the faith beyond the churchy world, he spoke at Portland’s City Club lunch about poverty and biblical justice.

Addressing a filled St. Mary Cathedral in 1999, the archbishop read a list of invectives often used against the church: “brain-dead, backward, rules-driven, guilt-inducing, heartless.” He added that many people in Oregon know the church more for its spaghetti dinners and Mass-time parking hassles than for its good works, powerful prayer and “daily miracles.” He hoped to surmount the bad image.

As the 2,000th year of Christianity arrived, he saw an opportunity to gear up evangelization. He designated eight historical pilgrimage sites in the state. A team from the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association visited Oregon to help parishes find ways to offer the faith to those who don’t practice. A leadership team from parishes was formed and an office of evangelization established.

Then came a wide-reaching initiative. Catholics from all over western Oregon would meet in homes to pray over scripture and consider ways to embody and spread the gospel in their everyday lives. Called Disciples in Mission, the process impacted almost every Catholic household.

He led a local pilgrimage to Catholic sites in Oregon, mingling with pilgrims as the buses drove down Oregon country roads.

On a pilgrimage in Jacksonville, at historic St. Joseph Church, he at one point walked outside with the Eucharist so overflow pilgrims could participate in adoration. Archbishop Vlazny “is absolutely delicious,” St. Joseph parishioner and organist Terri Gieg said that day, noting that the archbishop spoke to every pilgrim.

He also led a jubilee-year trip to Rome. Mike Murphy, a plumber from Grants Pass, went along. One evening at dinner, upon discovering that Murphy was a plumber and his friend Chris Mecca was an attorney, the archbishop spontaneously broke into song. To the tune of a song from the musical “Oklahoma,” he changed the lyrics from “the Farmer and the Cowmen should be friends” to “the Plumber and the Lawyer should be friends.”

“It was a joy-filled evening,” Murphy recalls.

The archbishop began planning for a massive public celebration in one of secular Portland’s most hallowed halls — Memorial Coliseum, former home of the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.

After hundreds marched down streets and sang their devotion to Jesus and Mary, 10,000 faithful gathered at the sports arena for Mass, the largest ever in Oregon. Distributing Communion alone took 20 minutes.

Between events, high in the upper deck, a group from St. Anne Parish in Gresham erupted into Spanish chants in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Before Mass, the youths also prompted the large crowd to stand in sequence, a religious version of the wave. It was a day when even the mention of monasteries drew cheers.

The event made television news and was covered above the fold on the front page of the state’s largest newspaper, the Oregonian.

“God may seem distant to many people — too many people,” the archbishop told the massive crowd. “This is our jubilee challenge, our jubilee gift to the world — our God is not a distant God.”

At an evening youth rally, the archbishop walked on stage in sunglasses to speak — an original Man in Black.

An icon showing Mary as the inspiration for spreading the faith was displayed in St. Mary Cathedral in early 2003. It began traveling to various parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Portland.

That summer, the archbishop hosted the North American Institute for Catholic Evangelization in Portland.

“Our church does not exist for itself,” he said at the centennial Mass at Holy Redeemer Parish in North Bend in 2006. “This is not a club where we come together because everyone here is so nice. We are church, called by Christ to bring the message and mission he shared 2,000 years ago to the world of our own day.”

Archbishop Vlazny spoke out to government plainly, once telling President Clinton’s Justice Department that in refusing to block assisted suicide it was “abdicating its responsibility to protect vulnerable people from deadly harm.”

He wrote to lawmakers to urge forgiveness of debt for developing nations, to prevent the invasion of Iraq, to halt nuclear arms increases and to end the death penalty. He helped draft a bishops’ statement opposing capital punishment. “The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life,” the bishops said.

He often made appeals for universal health coverage and once pushed for background checks for buyers at gun shows as “reasonable and prudent policy.” He asked Sen. Gordon Smith to vote to maintain Medicaid levels, something the senator eventually did, in opposition to his fellow Republicans.

In the spring of 2001, the archbishop and other religious leaders called on Oregon legislators to increase budgets for low-income Oregonians by almost $159 million.

“Poor, vulnerable and needy persons in our state and society have a special call on our compassion,” the archbishop told a room full of reporters and photographers in Salem.

In what was called the Campaign for Fairness, the archbishop cited poor women, children, families, the aged and disabled people, explaining that budgetary decisions are moral decisions.

“We’re not playing the game of politics,” he said. “We are playing our advocacy role for poor people.”

Archbishop Vlazny is among signatories on a 2008 statement supporting legislation to ban torture by the CIA and all agencies of the U.S. government.

As a member of a bishops’ committee, he helped create a statement affirming the dignity of all persons, including those with disabilities. The statement urges parishes to make themselves more accessible and recognize and appreciate contributions of people with disabilities. He also became the regular celebrant of an annual Mass on World AIDS Awareness Day.

In addition to speaking out for the vulnerable, he acted. He sponsored a Bolivian child, quietly blessed disabled children from Spanish-speaking families in Cornelius and made regular prison visits, even confirming a death row inmate.

At a University of Portland conference on faith and life in 2005, he told worshipers, “Whenever we extend love, peace, compassion, forgiveness and support to those who have done nothing to deserve them, then we ‘get it’ as far as Jesus is concerned.”

Archbishop Vlazny quickly showed a deep personal concern for developing vocations. The number of archdiocesan seminarians has more than doubled during his tenure.

“The important priestly vocations question is not, ‘Do I want to be a priest?,’” the archbishop once wrote in the Sentinel. “The true priestly vocations question for a disciple is, ‘Is God calling me to be a priest?’”

He led an annual retreat for men exploring ordination and supported the Serra Club, a lay group that fosters and supports vocations to priesthood and religious life.

In a homily at an ordination, the archbishop called priestly celibacy “the most powerful, evangelical and countercultural sign you can offer God’s people.” He also said priesthood is “adventure-filled.”

He began ordaining large classes of permanent deacons, seven in 2002, asking them to thwart evil inside and outside the church. He was one of the first bishops to require a professional credential for permanent deacons.

To men on their way to becoming priests he said, “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

One week, he’d hold a special Mass with Religious. The next he’d gather with married couples and bless their marriages.

In Oregon, he saw traditional marriage challenged. In 2004, Multnomah County issued thousands of marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“The Catholic understanding of marriage is well known. Same-sex unions are not marriage,” Archbishop Vlazny countered. “Marriage is an intimate covenant relationship between a man and a woman, which by its very nature is for the good of the couple and the generation and education of children.”

He realized that Catholics could not impose church restrictions on secular culture, but said the church had a right to persuade fellow citizens to look at the bigger picture and not regard gay marriage simply from the perspective of civil rights.

Voters eventually would agree to define marriage in Oregon as between one man and one woman. But state lawmakers soon paved the way for civil unions, giving gay couples most of the benefits of marriage.

The church’s opposition to civil unions “in no way diminishes our care and respect for homosexual persons, children of God, one and all,” the archbishop wrote in 2005. “But,” he added, “the issue is marriage, not homosexuality.”

In a decision that is likely to have significant long-term effects, Archbishop Vlanzy formed a lay-dominated council charged with helping guide Catholic ministry in western Oregon.

“Working together, we can better accept when we say it is not the pastor’s church, it is not our church, it is God’s church,” he told delegates. “Our challenge is to consider the needs of the whole church, not just our own.”

He urged the new council always to consider the poor in their deliberations.

At a mission-themed gathering in the University of Portland’s sports dome in summer 2004, the archbishop and the council presented a ministry plan, saying the Archdiocese of Portland and its parishes will focus on faith formation, youth ministry and multicultural church life.

Bob Lowry, a local attorney and now a seminarian, chaired the first Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. He says that body, as well as the annual vicariate meetings meant to generate input for the council, were productive and sent a clear message to the people in the pews about how much the archbishop cares and listens.

Within his first few months in Oregon, Archbishop Vlazny had presided at a youth conference, saying that human imperfections are what make us reach out to God for help. “Our good news is not, ‘Hey, look at us. Aren’t we great?’” he said in a homily. “No, our good news is ‘Wow! What a God!’”

Archbishop Vlazny was one of only a few prelates asked to lead a catechetical session at World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002.

Jesus, he told the Oregon pilgrims, “encourages us to be generous and caring, to perform our own miracle of creating a community of friends and believers in the course of our travels.”

Back in Portland, he began joining Catholic young adults for a barbecue, something he has done each year since.

It was standing room only when he spoke to young Catholics gathered in a Portland brew pub in 2006.

In 2003, Archbishop Vlazny welcomed an annual Mass honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King to the cathedral for the first time.

“Seeking justice is seeking the establishment of right relationships between ourselves and our God, our sisters and brothers in the human family, and all of creation,” he said in his homily. “Those who take the quest seriously learn, like Dr. King, that whatever does affect one directly, affects all indirectly.”

He met with African American Catholics to hear their concerns and encourage their ministry.

During the hot summer of 2001, Archbishop Vlazny spoke out for farmworkers as they marched through western Oregon to highlight their cause. The archbishop also had farmers’ concerns at heart.

“We cannot continue to demand cheap berries and other produce at the expense of growers and workers,” he said, calling on everyone to work for a sustainable economy.

The archbishop’s concerns for immigrants endured.

In June 2007, he denounced a federal immigration raid on a North Portland business, calling it “an affront to a nation whose tradition has always welcomed the stranger.” Calling for a moratorium on raids until national immigration reform is complete, the archbishop said the arrests tear apart families.

In letters sent this fall, he urged Oregon’s U.S. senators to “reject restrictionist and narrow, enforcement-only proposals, in favor of reforms that will comprehensively address our broken immigration system.”

Archbishop Vlazny and other bishops of the Pacific Northwest released a pastoral letter on the Columbia River watershed in early 2001. An unprecedented project, the letter challenged readers to promote sustainable environmental relationships while developing community economic benefits.

The document is still being discussed and invoked when, for example, a team of students from the University of Portland clears invasive plants from a local riverbank so trees can grow and help cool the water — and perhaps the planet.

In one of his Sentinel columns, he praised a new building at Holy Redeemer School in Portland, which was built with high environmental standards.

In 2006, Archbishop Vlazny pointed out the dangers of global warming. He called on Catholics to be prudent stewards of God’s “very precious gift.”

He promoted environmentally sound buildings, hybrid cars and forms of energy like wind, hydrogen, solar and biomass.

The archbishop met with theologians, scientists, environmentalists, business people and students at the University of Portland to discuss the links between environment and theology, bringing concern for the earth into Catholic social doctrine.

In 2001, when terrorists seized jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Archbishop Vlazny was at a committee meeting in Washington, D.C. He phoned Portland to report that he was unharmed. Then he asked Catholics to pray and work for a peaceful resolution.

Once U.S. forces bombed Afghanistan, the archbishop asked Catholics to refrain from passing judgment on those who made the decision.

“It is a time for prayer, support and concern for our fellow citizens who are called upon to protect a people in a time of trouble,” he wrote.

The archbishop was among the 25 Oregon religious leaders who signed a 2002 statement challenging the U.S. push toward war in Iraq.

“We believe that pre-emptive, unilateral military action towards any nation is not consistent with U.S. and U.N. policy and would set an unsettling precedent for other nations,” said the statement. “We are opposed to any action that would result in civilian casualties and further victimize the innocent people of Iraq, who have already suffered more than two decades of war and economic deprivation.”

In March 2003, Oregon Catholics joined the faithful around the world in offering millions of prayers for a quick end to the Iraq war. “War has begun; our most powerful weapon is prayer,” Archbishop Vlazny said in a homily. “We pray for peace as well as for our many brothers and sisters at war in Iraq. We pray for a speedy peace and a healthy reconciliation.”

In 2005, the archbishop received an award from the Oregon National Guard in recognition of his support for U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq.

Archbishop Vlazny reached out to other faiths steadily. The already strong Catholic relationship with the Jewish community was enhanced by his Shabbat visit to Congregation Neveh Shalom. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he joined an interfaith panel with Jews and Muslims to cultivate religious understanding. In a Sentinel column, he offered a primer on Islam.

He had met the Dalai Lama earlier during the Tibetan’s Portland visit. The two men shared thoughts on peacemaking. The archbishop said that Buddhists and Christians alike “acknowledge that there is no peace without justice.”

With the Archdiocese of Portland as one of the supporting members of a coalition, a Holocaust memorial was dedicated in Washington Park. During the ceremony, the archbishop said that “the past will be wisely remembered so the future might be changed.”

About the same time, in a joint celebration, Archbishop Vlazny and Lutheran Bishop Paul Swanson spoke about the challenges and hopes facing the Catholic and Lutheran traditions as believers work toward further unity.

Recognizing that the archdiocese is fortunate to have three Eastern rite parishes in its midst, the archbishop visited the local Maronite Catholic parish, reminding Roman Catholics that the other rites of the church are an important part of the Catholic family even though they are not a formal part of the Roman archdiocese.

Near the end of 2000, the archdiocese settled several lawsuits and issued an apology on the heels of a large — and old — priest-pedophile case.

“These painful experiences remind us that there are times when we must act rather than remain silent and passive, be caring instead of indifferent, and follow our conscience rather than be controlled by fear,” the archbishop said in a public apology. “Otherwise, we may fail again to protect God’s precious gift of our children.”

Though he had no direct link to the wrongdoing, the archbishop took responsibility. There would be many more apologies to come.

In early 2002, as sex-abuse coverups in Boston and elsewhere became top news, the archbishop explained new policies which were emerging from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In cases of credible reports of abuse, the archdiocese would respond promptly, remove the suspected abuser from ministry, report the incident to civil law enforcement, reach out to victims and families and be open with the wider community. He appointed a director for child protection and victim assistance.

Reports of abuse from the past did file in. Archbishop Vlazny always encouraged those who believed they were injured by archdiocesan personnel to make contact so that the archdiocese can promote healing.

Meanwhile, the archbishop sought to sustain disheartened priests who were faithfully living out their promises.

“This makes our life-giving ministry so much more challenging,” Archbishop Vlazny said during a Chrism Mass, his voice pitched with emotion. “I assure you, you will always have a special place in my heart and prayers.” He told the priests and congregation at the cathedral that the church in western Oregon should continue “journeying forward.” After the homily, the clergy and congregation applauded.

The day after the Mass, Oregon’s major daily newspaper lauded him, citing his pastoral outreach to sex abuse victims and his plans to stop abuse by church workers as a national model.

He admitted in a meeting of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council that, as a body, the bishops had mismanaged the handling of sex-abuse cases. There was not uniform policy, he said. In the past, he added, priests and bishops considered themselves privileged persons who were not required to report incidents of abuse. Now, he said, the aim would be transparency.

He asked Catholics to pray and fast on special days as a spiritual response to the failings.

Financial pressures from pending lawsuits forced the archdiocese to announce a series of deep staffing cuts at the pastoral center. More than 30 positions were eliminated.

Then, in July, 2004, facing overwhelming financial pressure from two impending trials, the archbishop filed for bankruptcy. His became the first Catholic diocese ever to enter such legal protection.

The archbishop feared a few big court awards would leave nothing for most victims and would interfere with the church’s good works.

The archbishop saw himself “as the father of a divided and troubled family” and continued an effort to communicate with victims who were, after all, Catholic.

“All of us Catholics here in western Oregon, in spite of our present plight, need to renew our commitment to reach out to victims,” he wrote. “The fact that victims did come forward has helped the Catholic community to address this very serious societal problem of child abuse.”

He kept sending letters to update parishioners on bankruptcy proceedings. They were full of numbers and candor, not obfuscation.

The 33-month-long bankruptcy ended in 2007 when a federal judge approved a $75 million settlement and a financial reorganization plan.

“It is my sincere prayer that our ability to compensate the many victims will assist them in their efforts to achieve personal healing and peace of heart,” Archbishop Vlazny said at a press conference, revealing that he prays for victims every day.

“In the beginning, I was looking at it as a distraction from the more important work of the church,” the archbishop would say of the scandal. “But a pastor has to deal with what is there in the lives of the people.”

The situation, he said, served as a wake-up call for the church. Now, there will be more protection for children and less complacency about Catholicism’s future.

Amid the abuse crisis, there was bright news for the church. More than 1,400 people became Catholic in 2002, one of the highest numbers on record. The Annual Catholic Appeal exceeded expectations by hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from new donors who back the church’s work.

Archbishop Vlazny in 2002 founded a new parish in Washington County. St. Juan Diego was the first new parish in the Archdiocese of Portland since 1982.
Nine men began priestly formation for the archdiocese in 2003, a large class by standards of the day.

Through it all, the archbishop’s sense of humor remained. In 2006, the Cathedral bulletin announced that a Mass would be offered for the intentions of “Archbishop Vlazny, deceased.” The typo made him laugh his famous laugh, but also made him grateful for those who pray for him.

Archbishop Vlazny came to be seen as a wise guide on matters spiritual and practical. He has written almost 570 columns for the Sentinel and El Centinela, and regularly wins honors for them from the Catholic Press Association. His column goes out on a website and is emailed to hundreds each week.

A man who still walks or runs in the morning, praying the rosary along the way, he tends to urge priests to stay physically and spiritually fit. He admonishes them to keep up a healthy diet.

“I tell them, ‘You don’t have wives to nag you, so your bishop can nag you,’” he once said.

He advises that families eat dinner together and often warned that people starve themselves spiritually without the Eucharist and prayer. Showing a confidence in the corporate importance of prayer, he often praises monastic life, calling it the “heart of evangelization.” He once referred to the Trappist abbey in Lafayette as an “engine room of the church.”

But throughout his years in Oregon, and at every opportunity, the archbishop has focused on the laity, urging them to take on the evangelizing mission of the church, offering Gospel values and living them at home, in the workplace, in the marketplace. This has been the hallmark of his teaching.

“The focus on evangelization, building the kingdom of God together here on earth, has energized many of us,” Archbishop Vlazny wrote last month. “We have become disciples in mission together. That is my greatest delight.”

— Robert Pfohman, Ed Langlois, Ellen Skerrett, Kristen Hannum, Bill Britt, Ivan Kubista