OBITUARIES

Sister Virginia Fabilli, SSS

Sister Virginia Fabilli, a Sister of Social Service who worked for a time at the Community Law Center in Oakland, died on April 10, at 91.

She was born in Colorado, the youngest of five children of Italian immigrants, and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She entered the Sisters of Social Service in 1951 and earned a BS at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles.

A lifelong champion of social justice, she was instrumental in founding the work of the Sisters in Zacapu, Michoacán, Mexico. She also worked in parishes in Oregon and California.

She is survived by Mary Fabilli of Berkeley, Lillian Osborne of San Francisco, and Albert Fabilli of Cupertino.

Vigil and funeral services were held in the chapel at Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino.

Memorial donations may be made to Sisters of Social Service, 4316 Lanai Road, Encino, CA 91436.

Retired Bishop McFarland, a native of Martinez, dies at 88

ORANGE, Calif. (CNS) — Retired Bishop Norman F. McFarland, who led the Diocese of Orange for 11 years until his 1998 retirement, died April 16 after a brief illness. He was 88.

A funeral Mass was celebrated April 23 at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange.

Bishop McFarland was known throughout his episcopal career as a top financial manager, including keeping what was then the Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas out of bankruptcy with eight days of phone calls to his fellow bishops to provide grants or long-term loans to help out the diocese, which had been laid low by a series of bad investments.

Born Feb. 21, 1922, in Martinez, Bishop McFarland was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1946. He soon afterward earned a degree in canon law from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and returned to San Francisco to teach and to work in the archdiocesan tribunal.

He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of San Francisco in 1970 and became pastor of the city’s historic Mission Dolores.

Four years later, he was appointed apostolic administrator for temporal affairs for what was then known as the Diocese of Reno. He was formally installed as its bishop in March 1976.

Bishop McFarland ran the diocese, renamed the Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas, for close to 11 years — freeing the diocese from all of its debt obligations during his tenure — before being appointed to Orange, where he served until retiring in 1998.

In 1988, after the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, as it was known then, disrupted an early morning Mass inside an Orange church to arrest seven people on suspicion of being illegal aliens, Bishop McFarland said he hoped the INS “realized that they made a mistake — one that was imprudent and irresponsible. . . . Mistakes are mistakes,” he said. “But if they’re repeated one has to question the motives.”

Afterward, the INS issued a new policy that said its agents would no longer enter churches in pursuit of illegal aliens without a search or arrest warrant or prior approval from a supervisor.

Bishop McFarland was part of a three-bishop commission appointed by Pope John Paul II in 1990 to investigate the finances of the fiscally troubled Diocese of Fresno. The year before, he was part of a team that helped the Diocese of Tucson cut its $22.5 million debt.

In 2005, he contributed money and lent his name to a writing fellowship sponsored by Act One, which seeks to populate Hollywood with writers who have ethical and spiritual backgrounds as well as scriptwriting skills.

He has no immediate survivors.

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