Longtime Los Angeles hospital chaplain and social justice advocate Father Chris Ponnet died Oct. 7. He was 68.
Ponnet had been pastor of the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care near downtown Los Angeles for the last 30 years. During that time, he also served as director of the nearby LA County + USC Medical Center’s Department of Spiritual Care, leading an interfaith team of chaplains ministering at one of California’s largest hospitals.
“A shepherd to our community for over 30 years, Fr. Chris lived the Gospel through action — loving the marginalized, lifting the forgotten, and showing us all what true faith looks like,” read a statement posted to the St. Camillus Center’s website on Wednesday.
Ponnet’s social ministry included leading the grassroots abolition group Catholics Against the Death Penalty Southern California, as well as serving as chaplain of LA’s Catholic Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Persons and as a member of the Pax Christi Southern California Leadership Team. His advocacy resulted in more than 30 arrests for civil disobedience over the years.
One of eight children, Christopher D. Ponnet was born in 1957 and grew up at St. Luke Church in Temple City. In a 2022 interview given before receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award from St. John’s Seminary, Ponnet credited pastor and mentor Msgr. John Birch, as well as his parents, Frank and Mary Louis Ponnet, with helping nurture his vocation — and a passion for social justice.
His aunt, Sister Mary Kevin Breen, OP, was also influential in what he called “the belief in the goodness of call.”
Upon his ordination in 1983, Ponnet was deeply affected by how the AIDS crisis had become a major focal point while he was at his first parish, Our Lady of the Valley Church in Canoga Park. He frequently visited Northridge Hospital to accompany those afflicted, many cast aside and left alone.
Those years of parish work prepared him for his longest assignment: pastor at the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care near the Lincoln Heights area of LA.
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, Ponnet mobilized to ensure patients at LA County + USC Medical Center (better known as “County hospital”), which serves some of LA’s poorest, had contact with chaplains, either in person or virtually. In some cases, Ponnet himself managed to hear confessions and administer the sacrament of the sick amid the strict health safety protocols.
At the time, Ponnet said the pandemic crisis had served to raise “the big spiritual questions” of life and death not only among patients, but also among staff.
“People are asking both the personal question of their own health and the arbitrariness of one person versus another member of their family being infected,” said the veteran chaplain. “But they’re asking more often, ‘Why is God allowing this to happen? Is there something global, and God is punishing the world?’ ”
The pandemic also led to a higher number of LA County’s “unclaimed dead,” bodies that were never claimed by family or loved ones, for whatever reason. Ponnet would annually serve as a Catholic representative in an interfaith burial ceremony put on by the LA County Board of Supervisors.
“The key piece is that we believe in the dignity of each person,” Ponnet said in 2023. “That includes while they’re in the womb, and while they’re alive as well as when they die. So this is a moment in which we as churches, but also uniquely run by the Board of Supervisors, a government entity, that sees these people with a sense of respect and dignity that many other entities don’t.”
In 2022, Ponnet was the first pastor in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to inaugurate a specially designed “healing garden” prayer space for victims of sexual abuse. The garden at St. Camillus served as the model for other gardens in the archdiocese and across the country.
Depending on the occasion, Ponnet could be found presiding over liturgies at the L.A. Catholic Worker on Skid Row, attending rallies for immigrant rights, and speaking out against abortion.
He was also one of the most recognizable speakers and exhibitors at the LA Religious Education Congress, known for his workshops on social justice issues and pastoral outreach to gay and lesbian persons.
“I trust the Spirit,” Ponnet told Angelus contributor Tom Hoffarth in 2022. “I trust the community of saints to guide us. I believe in the Irish spirituality of friendships, “Anam Cara” — we all need real friendships in our lives. I believe in my role to create, like Martin Luther King said, communities of the beloved.”
Tom Hoffarth contributed to this report.
