After 20 years, a columnist sets down his pen

In January 1998, a few weeks after I started as editor of The B.C. Catholic, Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo came to me with a proposal.

I was new at the pastoral centre, and I didn’t really know Msgr. Lopez-Gallo, who was the judicial vicar supervising the marriage tribunal. He was also pastor of St. Pius X Parish in North Vancouver.

But he had an intriguing idea – a series of articles about the rights of children.

As he would say in his first column, the protection of children’s rights is essential for our society and the survival of our faith. Quoting Pope John Paul II, “a Church without children is a Church in agony.” He even wondered whether a charter of children’s rights might make it onto the agenda of the approaching archdiocesan synod.

Curious to see where he would go with the columns, I took him up on his offer. The result was a lively series that explored not only the rights of children, but the reception of the sacraments and the obligations of parents.

It was also the launch of a B.C. Catholic mainstay, a weekly column that would run for two decades, becoming a must-read that attracted praise and criticism from readers – lay and religious – as he took the articles beyond children and the sacraments and weighed in on issues large and small, sometimes wading into controversial territory.

Often using personal experiences, he addressed with compassion topics like the ordination of women and parenting issues such as dealing with a same-sex attracted child. His experience at the marriage tribunal provided him with deep understanding as he wrote about marriage. His personal history, from growing up in Mexico during the persecution of the Church, to his time working at the Holy See, gave him rich insight on 20th-century Church history.

He wrote about canon law, early Church history, the Popes who have influenced him, lay movements, ethical dilemmas posed by technology such as cloning, and the priest abuse crisis. In fact, he was writing about the clerical abuse scandal years before it exploded worldwide in the early 2000s.

Through the years, several themes reoccurred, including his fondness for his time working in Rome serving as secretary to his mentor Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, Dean of the College of Cardinals during the Second Vatican Council.

Another was his concern for children, and when by 2003 he had enough columns to comprise a two-volume set of books, they were published with the proceeds going to Hogar de Nazareth Orphanage, which he sponsored.

Through the years, his columns appeared below mine on the editorial page, where both of us would occasionally wade into trouble. But there was one thing you could count on from Msgr. Lopez-Gallo: orthodoxy. I don’t know how many times I read his take on an issue to help me make up my mind about it.

In 2013, at the age of 86, he officially retired as a pastor and was profiled in the Vancouver Province, which noted that he was “slowing down” with a five-day-a-week job at the Vancouver Archdiocese.

He has continued as judicial vicar to this day and kept plugging away at his columns until recently, when health issues started interfering with his output.

When I proposed that he contribute bi-weekly columns, he welcomed the offer, although he stopped writing soon after.

Each week, when I have to fill the spot on the editorial page where Msgr. Lopez-Gallo’s column appeared for more than 20 years, I realize something is missing now from The B.C. Catholic. It was more than a column; it was a voice, a teaching opportunity, a glimpse of history … a story.

Thank you for sharing your stories, Monsignor.

Ad multos annos.