“We don’t have these core values as something aside,” said Bishop Gerald Barnes during his 45-minute address. “We have them as an essential part of how we do things.”
The Combined Vicariate Meetings are a yearly gathering at the Diocesan Pastoral Center of leadership and staff from the parishes and Catholic schools of the Diocese. The San Bernardino Pastoral Region gathered on Feb. 15, the Riverside Pastoral Regional on Feb. 21.
To further reinforce the theme of the day, this year’s meetings were lengthened to include breakout sessions on the four core values. Panels guided the breakout sessions, which also included plenty of time for small group sharing among participants. During the Feb. 15 breakout session on Reconciliation and Collaboration Sam Kolendowicz, Office Manager of Our Lady of Hope Parish, San Bernardino, served as a panelist. She shared her perspective of how much the parish has changed in the 30 plus years since she joined it, from a predominantly white parish called St. Ann that typically donated 10 percent of its annual collection to struggling parishes in the area, to the more culturally diverse Our Lady of Hope parish that struggles to make ends meet.
It is embracing the values of Reconciliation and Collaboration that has been the key for longtime parishioners to navigate change and welcome communities of different cultural backgrounds, Kolendowicz said during the breakout session.
“We look at it as a way to learn and make life richer,” she said.
Annivette Rhodes, Parish Secretary at St. Adelaide, Highland, attended that breakout session and said that those themes resonated with the current reality of her parish, which recently expanded its church building and is seeing a lot of newcomers.
“It flickered a light in how we can make our parish better,” she said. “We have to be able to be more accommodating and more understanding of the situation.”
The Combined Vicariate Meetings also affords parishes the opportunity to visit with diocesan ministry representatives who set up display tables up and down the main corridor of the Pastoral Center.
“I love the fact that everyone was there,” said Carolina Osuna, Parish Secretary at St. Bernardine, who was attending her first Combined Vicariate Meeting. “We could ask all the questions that we needed to and it was an awesome way to learn about all the diocesan ministries out there.”