On a Saturday morning in October 1978, Mike Molina was working in the rectory office at St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Church in Lomita when the doorbell rang. He answered it to find a tall, smiling priest with an outstretched hand.
“Hi,” said Father Joe Sartoris. “I’m your new pastor.”
For Molina, that encounter was the start of a working relationship with Sartoris that evolved into a close friendship lasting nearly 50 years.
Since his death June 27 — four days before his 98th birthday — late LA Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Martin Sartoris is being remembered by friends and associates like Molina across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for his warm, pastoral presence.
“As a person and as a priest, he was exactly the same — just a very real, kind, and loving person, a fun person with a great sense of humor,” said Auxiliary Bishop Marc Trudeau, current San Pedro Pastoral Region bishop, the role Bishop Sartoris held from 1994 to 2003.
“Joe loved being around people, and people flocked to him. And every parish priest, when you mention Joe’s name, says he was the best pastor, the best presence, a good shepherd — everything you wanted in a priest.”
Bishop Oscar Solis of Salt Lake City, who succeeded Sartoris as auxiliary bishop for the archdiocese’s San Pedro Pastoral Region (and preceded Trudeau), called him “a dedicated shepherd and my big brother in the episcopal ministry” who was a mentor and a “source of inspiration” during his time in Los Angeles.
“He was truly a gentleman around all people, clergy, religious, and the laity who engaged himself with everyone around him with great interest, enthusiasm, and joy,” Solis told Angelus.
“I am grateful for his exemplary commitment to God, the Church, and the people of God he served that taught me a lot. I join the people of God of the archdiocese in prayer and sadness but filled with hope in God’s promise of eternal life.”
‘He remembered everyone’
When LA priest Father Pat Mullen was ordained in 1985, his first parish assignment was at St. Margaret Mary.
“It was a joyous unfolding of priesthood for me, to serve with Joe Sartoris as my pastor,” said Father Mullen, now pastor at Padre Serra Church, Camarillo. “When I made mistakes, Joe would say to me, in a very kind way, ‘What have you learned from this?’ That gentle, loving approach helped me grow as a priest. And he had a genuine concern for the welfare of everyone in the parish.”
Bishop Trudeau recalled being assigned as pastor to St. Pius X Church in Santa Fe Springs in 2001, where he first worked closely with Sartoris. He later served as pastor of St. Margaret Mary, and learned firsthand the mark his predecessor had made as pastor.
“Joe was so loved and well-respected, it was like he never left,” Trudeau noted. “He’d come back for baptisms, weddings and so forth, and he remembered everyone. There were also many seminarians who did their internships at St. Margaret Mary, and they all benefitted from Joe’s example.”
When Trudeau was made a bishop in 2018, he asked Sartoris to be his co-consecrator.
“Joe advised me to be close to the priests and parishes,” he said. “He had a desire to be open and inclusive when it came to serving the Church. And I’ve tried to be the same in my ministry.”
‘Holy, warm, caring’
“Bishop Joe was a true son of Vatican II,” said Molina, now retired as St. Margaret Mary’s director of liturgy but still active at the parish. “He loved implementing the reforms, especially when it came to full conscious, active participation of assembly, and in developing new ministries that engaged the entire community.”
Those ministries included those serving and involving youth, the Spanish-speaking, and the poor.
“Father Joe insisted that we were one community, worshipping as one people of God, and he made it a hallmark of his pastorate,” said Molina. “We were so lucky to experience that time and place in the life of our church.”
When Msgr. Sartoris was named Auxiliary Bishop overseeing the San Pedro Region in 1994, “we had mixed emotions,” admitted Molina, whose 1988 wedding to his wife, Teresa, was officiated by then-Msgr. Sartoris. “We were happy that he was named a bishop because he was certainly deserving, but we were sad to lose him as pastor. But the entire region, and the archdiocese, gained a wonderful pastoral leader.”
Donna Morris-Barnes, who cantored at St. Margaret Mary while Sartoris was pastor and then served nearly 30 years as liturgy and music director at several parishes in the San Pedro Region, remembered Bishop Sartoris as “a very holy, warm, caring person who loved being with people. He was a musician himself, a pianist, and he was always so appreciative of what we as music ministers provided.”
She recalled how, in the 1990s during the Croatian War of Independence, Sartoris came to Mary Star of the Sea Church in San Pedro, home to a large Croatian Catholic community.
“A lot of Croatian parishioners had lost loved ones during the ethnic cleansing that took place,” Morris-Barnes said. “Bishop Joe came to speak to the community, to calm them down. He had a wonderful way of letting people know that everything was going to be OK.”
‘Meaningful, moving, spiritual’
LA Catholics close to Sartoris fondly recall his homilies — and the speaking voice he used to deliver them.
“I can still hear that great, deep voice that carried across a room, and I can still recall his homilies — so meaningful, so moving, so spiritual,” said Inga Duranovic, director of operations for Catholic Travel Centre, Burbank, which arranged many Sartoris-led pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land.
“Bishop Joe was a favorite among Catholic Travel Centre’s overseas guides, who were touched — as we in our office were — by his assuring presence, his good-natured perspective, and his genuine gratitude,” said Duranovic, who traveled on several of his pilgrimages. “He always offered that beautiful smile and a kind word.”
That was clear, Mike Molina noted, from the moment he met his new pastor in 1978.
“We will always remember him outside the church, after every Mass, greeting people with that big smile and those huge velvet hands,” he said. “It was important for him to greet people, because that was how he helped form community.
“And after he retired as bishop, he insisted on doing confirmations well into his 90s, saying, ‘I want to meet our young people, because they need to know they have a place in this church.’ ”
“Joe found joy in ministry,” added Mullen. “At St. Margaret Mary, he started a Spanish-speaking ministry and an outreach ministry for the poor, in addition to ministries for youth and women and men. There would be three different things going on at once around the parish every night, and Joe was at the heart of it all.
“He was confident in who he was as a person and a priest,” said Mullen. “There was a beautiful humility and strength about him that everyone who knew him will always treasure.”
The funeral Mass for Bishop Joseph Sartoris will be celebrated Friday, July 18, 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 West Temple St., Los Angeles. A private entombment will immediately follow the Mass in the Cathedral Mausoleum for the immediate family and bishops present.
Condolences may be sent to the nearest kin: Steve Moloney, P.O. Box 668, Sierra Madre, CA 91025. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Priest’s Retirement Fund, 3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010, or the Presentation Learning Center, 10843 Gorman Ave., Los Angeles, CA 94244.
