August 2005 | Vol. 41 No 8 | Index
 

From the Director…

From the Director…

Dear Mission Friends:
During the past 40 years, our Dominican Mission newsletter has informed you of the activities of our Dominican Missionaries. Because of your generosity, we have been able to serve the poor and the needy in many parts of the world. In this issue, I would like to give a rather formal report to you asking for your contributions for a specific need: the building of a house for our Dominican Missionaries in Mexicali. Enclosed you will find the details that are involved. It may be that some of you would like to send a donation to us for this specific project.

I thank you in advance for your consideration.

In Christ’s Peace,

Fr. Martin Walsh, O.P.

Our Mexicali Ministry

Our missionary team currently ministers to a parish of 50,000 people who live in ten colonias across four communities that are served by a main parish church and three chapels. Seven of the colonias are in the city of Mexicali and three are out in the countryside. Our parishioners work as construction laborers, factory workers, farm workers, and street venders to name a few of the main occupations.

Our missionary team in Mexicali currently consists of three Dominican Priests and two Dominican Sisters. The team provides the following services and programs.

Liturgy: This is celebrated at the main parish church and the three chapels with Masses on the weekends and during the week.
 

Food Bag Program: This program provides sacks of beans, rice, and cooking oil that are delivered to the most needy of the parish.

Catechesis: The team assists in the formation of the catechetical program for children between the ages of four and twelve. The team teaches and supervises the program, evaluates the texts and resources, and makes presentations to parents of the children in the program.
 

Visiting the Sick: Team members bring communion and administer the Sacrament of the Sick.

Evangelization: The team visits homes, gives retreats, and facilitates days of recollection sharing the Word of God and the Faith with both committed Catholics and those not yet committed to the Faith.

Education: The team gives classes and talks regarding liturgy, prayer, the Catholic faith, and Scripture. The sisters have also recently formed 15 biblical-faith reflection groups.

Youth Ministry: The team founded, and currently oversees and directs, an adolescent program called Emmanuel, which is comprised of three youth groups ages 16 to 26.

Formation of Lay Leaders: The team runs seminars and retreats for lay leaders. Along with the parish team, they are assisting in the creation of a permanent formation program.

The Need for a Dominican Residence

On September 15, 1995, Fr. David Bello, O.P. arrived in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, and took up residence at the monastery of the Nuns of Perpetual Adoration. In December of that year, he was able to rent a small house within the boundaries of our parish. There are now three friars living in very cramped quarters several miles from the parish church. Until this time, he did not believe it right to build our own house while the people in cold weather during the winter and 120 degrees in the summer celebrated the Eucharist in the elements. However, considering the commitment of our Western Dominican Province to staff our ministry in Mexicali, now is the time to have a permanent residence. A new parish house would enable us to establish a permanent presence in the community and to expand our missionary team with more full-time, visiting, and seminarian missionaries, in addition to providing housing for our existing Dominican Friars. The house will also have rooms that can be used for meetings with parishioners and diocesan priests, brothers, and sisters.

The implementation of the project will be carried out by the pastor Fr. David Bello, O.P., the Dominican Mission Foundation Director Fr. Martin Walsh, O.P., and our newest Mexicali missionary Fr. Bart de la Torre, O.P. Our architect, Juan Jose Loubet Garcia has drawn up plans and will direct the construction team that will build the facility.

Gifts from friends of the Dominican Mission Foundation have enabled us to purchase the land and to pay for the land preparation costs. Preparation of the
land is now underway.

We ask for your prayers for completion of this project.

We welcome
our newest missionary…
Fr. Bartholomew
de la Torre, O.P.
 

Fr. Bartholomew was born on January 29, 1940, in Los Angeles, California, of Mexican immigrant parents. After seven years in the Los Angeles Archdiocesan seminaries, he entered the Order of Preaches (known also as the Dominicans because they were founded by St. Dominic in 1216 A.D.). Once in the Order, he earned his bachelor’s degree, majoring in Thomistic Philosophy. This was followed by an M.A. in Thomistic Philosophy, an M.Div., and a second M.A. in Thomistic Theology, all from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, which is a founding member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the only institutional presence there that is Thomistic.

Ordained a priest on June 16, 1967, he then spent a year as a hospital chaplain in Houston, Texas, where after 11 months he received a Diploma in Clinical Pastoral Education. Thereafter, he received his Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, majoring in the history of medieval theology and minoring both in the history of medieval philosophy and in Latin paleography. This last encompasses the disciplines of reading ancient Latin shorthand and of editing medieval manuscripts.

Upon receiving his doctorate, Father worked for a year in Italy, and then for eight in Washington, D.C., as a member of the philosophy faculty at the Catholic University of America. In both assignments, he prepared for publication medieval manuscripts of the writings of his fellow Dominican priest, St. Thomas Aquinas.

From September 1995 to September 2002, Father was a chaplain at Thomas Aquinas College in the mountains above Santa Paula just east of Ventura.

In the course of over 35 happy years as a priest, Fr. de la Torre has also been an associate pastor in Toronto and Scarborough, Canada; Benicia and Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon. In these places he taught elementary, high school and CCD religion, and conducted adult seminars on Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles.

For the past three years, Father has been an associate pastor at St. Dominic’s Church in Benicia, on the Sacramento River at the northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay, a historic and picturesque city at a scenic location. On July 1, 2005, he began his new assignment as a Dominican Missionary in Mexicali.