Late Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sartoris was remembered at his July 18 funeral Mass as a big-hearted pastor who was always “one of us” during his 72 years as a priest and bishop in Los Angeles.
“He was magnificent at convincing the rest of us that we were loved by God,” said the funeral’s homilist, Father Ed Dover, who served alongside Sartoris at St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Church in Lomita in the early 1990s. “And then he proceeded to love us as he could, in whatever way he could, by serving however he could.”
More than 500 people — including guests from as far as Alaska and South Carolina — attended Sartoris’ funeral Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which was celebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez and followed by a private burial in the Cathedral’s crypt.
Among those in attendance were friends, relatives, former parishioners, and nearly 100 priests and 11 other bishops, including Bishop Joseph Brennan of Fresno and Bishop Oscar Solis of Salt Lake City, both former LA auxiliaries like Sartoris.
Speakers described the Glendale native as a gracious pastor who loved everything about being a priest, from parish ministry, to visiting troubled youth at Juvenile Hall, to leading pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land.
“He was clearly happy in his lifelong vocation,” said Sartoris’ nephew, retired LA Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Moloney, in remarks at the end of the funeral. “He said many times that he never doubted that he made the right decision to become a priest.”
Moloney, who shared the same birthday with Sartoris and considered him “like a brother,” said his uncle’s spirituality was built on an intense prayer life that in retirement included daily Mass in his private chapel, where he kept a prayer altar with photos of people to pray for.
Moloney also said that after attending a retreat as a priest with Venerable Fulton Sheen, Sartoris began praying a Holy Hour, a daily practice he kept for the rest of his life.
Cardinal Roger Mahony, who ordained Sartoris a bishop in 1994 and assigned him to oversee the archdiocese’s San Pedro Pastoral Region until his retirement in 2003, recalled that Sartoris’ authentic personality and sense of humor made him the most-requested bishop for Confirmations in the archdiocese. He also remembered the way Sartoris’ smile could “melt” even the most upset people during tense situations.
“I said to him, ‘How can you be so gracious to all these crazies?’ ” said Mahony in his remarks at the funeral. “And he would say, ‘Oh, well, you know, we're all a little crazy.’ ”
The funeral itself was in some ways a final message to his loved ones from Sartoris, who was cared for in his final years by the Carmelite sisters at Marycrest Manor in Culver City. He picked the liturgy’s readings, songs, and speakers, and a few instructions.
“He wrote: ‘Please don't change these readings. I believe they have something to teach all of us,’ ” reported Dover. “And in reflecting on that, that was truly the man. He was one of us. He was Joe, first and foremost.”
Among the notes left behind was a reflection on the Gospel passage chosen for the Mass (Jn 1:34-49), in which Jesus calls John and another disciple to “come and see” where he is staying.
“There have been many Johns in my life who have pointed out Jesus to me, many lay men and women, many of those I served,” Dover quoted Sartoris as writing. “[Sartoris] saw Jesus in us: in the poor, in the broken, in the wounded, in the excluded.”
Dover, pastor of Beatitudes of Our Lord Church in La Mirada, said that wherever Sartoris served, “he formed ministries and raised up other servants of God who would go out into the world and convince the world that God really does love them,” even in messy or broken situations.
A tribute in the funeral Mass’ program also recalled how Sartoris stayed close to fellow clergy and “scores of former priests who left active ministry and searched for their place in the Church.”
Surely the best-represented parish at the funeral was St. Margaret Mary, where Sartoris was pastor for 16 years before he was appointed a bishop by St. Pope John Paul II in 1994.
As she left the funeral, Ana Marie Lopez recalled first meeting “Father Joe” in the early 1990s while living in Wilmington. Her daughter, then a child, didn’t like the parish Lopez would take her to. So they decided to give St. Margaret Mary in nearby Lomita a try.
“After the first Mass, we were walking out and [Sartoris] said, ‘Hey, aren’t you guys new? Come on, let’s go have some cake.’ After that, my daughter loved it there. He was our priest, and he was so awesome.”
Guillermo and Silvia Molfetta didn’t meet Sartoris until 2013, when they joined Archbishop Gomez and some 300 LA Catholics on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Molfettas were assigned to the bus led by Sartoris, then well into his 80s. That was the start of a close friendship that included three more pilgrimages to Europe, dinners at Sartoris’ favorite Italian restaurant, and visits from the Molfettas’ extended family.
“He was so loving, so full of life, and he gave people good advice,” said Guillermo, a parishioner of St. Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood.
The Molfettas kept up their regular visits to Sartoris until last month, when they last saw him at Marycrest a few days before his death on June 27, four days before his 98th birthday. When asked what connected them so closely, Silvia echoed the descriptions of Sartoris as “a people’s priest” at the funeral.
“Just looking at him, he gave me peace and confidence to understand him, and he could understand me,” she said. “He was a gift for us, a gift of God.”
