Pace e Bene – 25 May 2025

I’ve always liked Cesar Chavez.

A short story. I have 3 relics of Farther [now Saint] Junipero Serra. One year a professor friend of mine was going to Los Angeles to attend a march in honour of Chavez’s birthday. I told him about the relics. I asked him if he would like to borrow one of them [I just only had 2 at that time] and he excitedly said yes.

So I brought it from home and loaned it to him. He carried it in his hands while marching and when people asked him what it was – and he told them – they all got excited and wanted to touch the relic. The Bishop of Los Angeles – who was also in the march – heard from others that there was a relic of Junipero Serra so insisted upon not only seeing It – but in also blessing the relic.

Needless to say that relic has been blessed many times now – since it was also blessed by which ever Pope was in office when my friend Andrew Galvan [who was a Franciscan monk at the time] took the ulna of Junipero Serra to Rome to have it made into thousands of relics by the Carmelite nuns.

When he returned I had a heck of a time getting the relic back. The professor was hesitant in returning it – but I prevailed and eventually got it back.

The third one I acquired when my adopted mother passed and the one I had given her was returned to me by her caregivers. I wear it pretty much every day and have done so since 2208.