(OSV News) — Janice Hahn is used to meeting important people. Her career in politics has included years on the Los Angeles City Council, the U.S. House of Representatives and since 2016, the LA County Board of Supervisors.
But as the minutes passed, and the chance to meet Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square got closer, Hahn was a little nervous.
“I really didn’t think it was going to happen,” admitted Hahn following the Oct. 28 general audience in the square.
Being from a Protestant, not Catholic background, Hahn confessed feeling like an “interloper” on the trip. Her father, Kenneth Hahn, was a towering figure in LA politics, an advocate for civil rights who served as a county supervisor for 40 years. Janice’s mother was the daughter of Protestant missionaries who served in Japan.
When her friend Diane Martinez invited her to join 30 members of the LA chapter of the Catholic Association for Latino Leadership, or CALL, on an Oct. 25-30 pilgrimage to Rome led by Archbishop José H. Gomez, she learned it would include a visit to the Vatican — and maybe a chance to meet the pope himself.
Much in common in ‘how we live our lives for Christ’
“There’s so much that we have in common in terms of how we live our lives for Christ,” said Hahn, a longtime friend of CALL who spoke at their Angel Awards gala dinner in September. “How many times on national TV has St. Peter’s Square been front and center? That is ground zero for the excitement of the entire Catholic Church.”
Ground zero, indeed. That morning, the LA group sat a few rows behind the pope’s brother, John Prevost, who was on pilgrimage with his home parish in New Lenox, Illinois. To their right sat the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns founded by St. Teresa of Kolkata.
Hahn, meanwhile, was holding her gift for the pope: a plaque of the original LA County seal her father designed in the 1950s.
When Leo stopped to greet the group, Hahn showed him the plaque, taking no more than 20 seconds to explain who her father was, and how he’d insisted on including a pair of crosses to reflect LA’s Christian origin story.
“It felt like I had five minutes with him,” Hahn told the Angelus, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “I felt like I told my whole story, like I gave my whole speech. It was unbelievable. It was such a beautiful moment for me.”
Group’s itinerary included tour of Borgo Laudato Si’ center
Beyond St. Peter’s, the CALL group’s itinerary included a tour of the Borgo Laudato Si’, an educational center in Castel Gandolfo conceived by Pope Francis as a place where the principles of his 2015 encyclical on the environment could be put into action through sustainable agriculture and environmental research.
The pilgrims checked out the plants from 300 different botanical species on the Borgo campus, got up close to two horses gifted to Leo and met up with LA priest Father Juan Gutierrez, who’s been working at Castel Gandolfo for the last year.
The pilgrims also visited the Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina, where the pope goes every Ash Wednesday, and the Basilica of St. Mary Major, which holds the tomb of Pope Francis near what was his favorite icon, Salus Populi Romani (Mary, Protectress of the Roman People).
On the last day, Archbishop Gomez broke off from the group to meet Leo in a private audience where he presented the pope with a copy of his new pastoral letter on Our Lady of Guadalupe, “The Wonder of America.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the group got an exclusive tour of the Catacombs of Praetextatus, where the remains of the fourth-century St. Vibiana, patroness of LA and namesake of its first cathedral, were discovered in the 1850s. The catacombs are closed to the public and are still being mapped by the Vatican Museums.
For the pilgrims, the highpoint of the journey was that brief encounter with the vicar of Christ.
A White Sox jersey and cap for the pope
Dr. Stanley Toy, who came with his wife, Vanessa, didn’t know what to expect after knee problems during the trip landed him in a wheelchair. He asked for volunteers, including Archbishop Gomez, to give Leo a Chicago White Sox jersey and a cap with the team’s alternate diamond sock logo that he’d found at the Major League Baseball flagship store in New York.
Instead, he was wheeled right in front of the pope. Toy pulled out the hat, then the jersey. Leo was delighted.
“My bum knees allowed for me to experience this most divine intervention with the pope,” said Toy, a retired ER physician who now works in hospital administration in the San Gabriel Valley.
Toy, a Giants fan, told the pope he wished the White Sox had won the World Series this year.
“I do too, but there’s always next year,” answered the pope.
Leo grinned as he held the cap for a group photo with the LA pilgrims. A few hours later, it was posted to his @pontifex Instagram account.
Edgar Morales, director of CALL’s LA chapter, said the participation of non-Latinos like Hahn and Toy on the pilgrimage was evidence of what CALL can accomplish.
“CALL was created for the uplifting of Latinos, but it was not an association created exclusively for Latinos,” said Morales.
Archbishop Gomez helped found CALL with Denver archbishop in 2007
In 2007, while archbishop of San Antonio, Archbishop Gomez helped found CALL together with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver. Morales said their vision was that of a diverse organization of business leaders rallying around community projects. The fellowship experienced during pilgrimage, Morales said, reflected that.
As a non-Catholic, Hahn said presenting the original LA county seal to Leo was important for another reason: those crosses that her father had fought to include have since been removed over concerns that they represented a government endorsement of Christianity.
It was an encounter that would have made her father proud, Hahn believes.
“For me to get that moment was just beautiful,” said Hahn. “I’m not worthy.”
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of the Angelus, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. This story ran first in the Angelus and is distributed in partnership with OSV News.
