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August
8, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 14Oakland,
CA
Franciscan pastor
returns
to full-time peace work
This past weekend, 400 peace activists from across the
United States gathered in the desert at the Nevada Test Site to mourn
the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S.
military. They attended teach-ins around the Bush administration’s
attempt to speed up the reinstitution of nuclear testing from a projected
three-year timetable to 18 months
Among them was Franciscan Father Louis Vitale, who co-founded the Nevada
Desert Experience 24 years ago to help stop nuclear weapons testing through
prayer, education, dialogue and nonviolent action.
The 73-year-old priest is returning to full-time peace work after years
as pastor of St. Boniface Parish in San Francisco. On Sept. 1, he will
officially become an Action Advocate for Pace e Bene, another national
organization he founded in the 1990’s.
Pace e Bene, with offices in Oakland and Chicago, sponsors educational
programs to counter the attitudes and behaviors that nurture violence.
Pace e Bene is Italian for “peace and all good.” Father Vitale
will focus on workshops in Oakland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
He will also travel to the annual prayer vigil and protest march at the
School of the Americas in Ft. Benning Georgia in November. Three years
ago, he performed civil disobedience there, crossing over an imaginary
line on to the base, with his friend, Father Bill O’Donnell of St.
Joseph the Worker Parish in Berkeley. Both served time in federal prison
— Father Vitale drew three months; Father O’Donnell, six.
And early next year he will teach his annual intersession class on “The
Spirituality of Non-Violence” at the Graduate Theological Union
in Berkeley. Franciscan Father Joseph Chinnici, academic dean at the Franciscan
School of Theology, says Father Vitale’s class is one of the most
popular GTU courses.
For Father Vitale, witnessing to peace is both a passion and a commitment.
“I have a serious concern about the destruction of life at both
the neighborhood and global levels and am trying to raise attention about
what we are doing to the world,” he said during a Voice interview.
“I wonder what Francis would think today if he saw how our military
is capable of destroying whole cities using one weapon,” he said.
What would he think if he knew that in the year 2005 “our entire
planet has become a potential military theater from space,” he asked.
Francis of Assisi and Louis Vitale share similar stories. Both men joined
the military, where each received first hand introductions to the horrors
and bloodiness of war. Both became pacifists
Vitale, a Pasadena native, served in the Air Force from 1954-57. His epiphany
came one day when a tracker spotted what he thought was a Russian bomber.
“Do a firing pass,” he told Vitale and his co-pilot. “Are
you sure it’s a Russian bomber?” they called back. Repeatedly
the answer came back, “Yes.”
Still uncertain if they should fire at the plane in the sky over the Midwest,
the pilots decided to come up from behind and take a look. They discovered
that the tracker had made a mistake.
They radioed back to their base with the comment, “If that’s
a Russian bomber, why is the little old lady waving at us out the window?”
To this day, Father Vitale recalls the incident as an example of how easily
a nuclear war could start by accident. It led him to some deep thinking,
a reassessment of values. He joined the
Franciscans after his military discharge.
But memories of that plane incident remained. In 1981, when the Franciscan
minister-general in Rome called upon friars throughout the world to sponsor
creative projects to celebrate the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’
birth, Father Vitale decided that a project highlighting Franciscan peacemaking
would be appropriate.
While he was mulling over what kind of project to do, Michael Affleck,
a GTU student and a peace organizer, asked Father Vitale as leader of
the Franciscan Province in Oakland about the possibility of working for
the province on peace issues.
The priest told Affleck that he’d support the project if it included
an event around the Nevada Test Site. Vitale had previously been stationed
in Las Vegas and was deeply concerned about the government’s weapons
testing in the desert. He decided the war machine needing a bit of challenging
Instruments of Peace was born. Nineteen people attended the first prayer
vigil held near the site on Ash Wednesday, 1982. Gradually Instruments
of Peace evolved into the Nevada Desert Experience and Anne Symens-Bucher,
Father Vitale’s secretary, took it on as part of her ministry with
the Franciscans. Today she is one of its chief organizers – planning
the annual August event and several retreats on peacemaking.
This year, many of Father Vitale’s friends and associates participated
in the three-day August retreat, taking the occasion to pay him tribute
He will also be honored on Aug. 26 at St. Boniface Parish with a readers’
theater performance of “The Catonsville Nine,” by Daniel Berrigan,
S.J. General admission for the 7 p.m. show is sliding scale from $10 to
$100. Call (415) 861-5848, or e-mail sbnctr@hotmail.comfor
further information. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
In
this undated Voice photo, Franciscan Father Louis Vitale (right) talks
with other peace activists in front of the Visitors Center at Lawrence
Livermore Lab. Among the listeners are from left, Marylia Kelley, director
of Tri-Valley CAREs; Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, Thomas Gumbleton; and
Pax Christi representatives, Kathleen Pruitt, Colleen Connell and Marie
Dennis. LARRY BRAZIL PHOTO
