Catholic Bishop Rose from Humble Roots
By Matthew T. Hall
When the Most Rev. Cirilo Flores becomes the fifth bishop in the history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego next year, he will reach a height he couldn't imagine while growing up in a Corona barrio. His parents were faithful but poor. He attended public schools until the Knights of Columbus began paying for a Catholic education in seventh grade. He was gifted but unsure of himself. He wrote in his yearbook that he would become a teacher, an attorney or a priest. In one show of his significant potential, he would become all three. His parents are dead now. But the announcement this week that Flores would succeed Bishop Robert Brom – who is scheduled to retire next year – marked an accomplishment for them, too. His father immigrated from Sinaloa, Mexico, to Arizona with his family and then made a living as a barber in Corona for 40 years. His mother was a high school dropout who earned an equivalency degree after her children had graduated and gone on to higher education. Flores was at Stanford School of Law when his mother got her degree. "My mom and dad were very special," said Flores, 63, the third in a chain of four boys and two girls. "They took to heart the duty of voting and my mom got several of her women friends who had never voted to register to vote and to get involved in the P.T.A. ... "And they were always very helpful and of service to our neighbors, even to the very end. When one of our neighbors was imprisoned, a woman, for drugs and homicide and one of the fellows on the block was dying of AIDS, it was my mom and dad who were close to them to the very end." He said his grandparents taught his parents the importance of community, and in turn, Cirilo and Armida Flores passed the lesson on to him and his siblings. Priests who have worked alongside Flores in the Orange County diocese said his ascent is due as much to his decision-making as to the grace of God. "I remember him sharing that a lot of the kids he grew up with are either dead or in jail," said pastor Pat Rudolph of St. Norbert Parish in Orange, where Flores ministered. "He recognizes the gifts that others have given, and he in turns offers the gift of his service to others." Tony Flores, 64, said even when they were children, people called "junior" the lawyer in the family. Now a retired university administrator in Arroyo Grande, Tony Flores decided that a Catholic education wasn't for him after a year. But his brother graduated from St. Edward Parish School in Corona, Notre Dame High School in Riverside and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Shortly afterward, Cirilo Flores' path took a detour. He set out to become a priest, but that first attempt lasted only about a year. He taught sixth-graders in public school for two years then became a lawyer. For a decade, he mainly represented banks and corporations in lawsuits against other banks and corporations. Then at a funeral reception for a friend who was a pastor in the Diocese of San Bernardino, three people approached him and asked why he wasn't a priest. He saw it as an invitation. Rudolph said he was at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo with Flores in the mid- to late 1980s. "He was always happy and always joyful and always saw the good in things, and I think he carried that into his priesthood and into being a pastor," Rudolph said. "He has a great head on his shoulders but still, recognizing where he came from, is very humble and never lording his authority over anybody." In 1991, Flores was ordained as a priest. Tony Flores isn't surprised that his brother has advanced so high or so quickly in the church, but for a while, he figured his brother would remain a pastor. "I thought he would probably be content in that role rather than in the hierarchy of the church," Tony Flores said. "He was very close to the people that he was pastoring. You have a sense of family when you have that. He liked that a lot. His parishioners loved him." Cirilo Flores has been on several church boards since. As auxiliary bishop of Orange, he was part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' subcommittees on Latin America and Hispanic Affairs. He also served multiple terms on his diocese's priest personnel board between 1995 and 2009, a period that included the past decade's national priest sexual-abuse scandal. Citing that service, Joelle Casteix, southwestern regional director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, criticized Flores' advancement in church leadership three years ago. She reiteraterd her concerns this week. "He served on the board during some of its most controversial times when they had numerous perpetrators in ministry and only kicked them out because the U.S. Congress of Catholic Bishops said you have to do so," Casteix said. "Since he's become a bishop, he's been virtually silent on victims' rights. There's a million things he could have done." Flores said Friday his board handled clergy placement in parishes and a separate board handled misconduct and the sexual-abuse cases within the church. "I don't know what she wants me to do. When Bishop Tod (Brown) settled the cases several years ago, he apologized maybe 100 times and so did the bishops in Orange and the priests." Rudolph said numerous parishioners told him that Flores' philosophy is to treat everyone with dignity. "Everybody thought he was their guy, you know what I mean?" Rudolph said. "Whether they were Hispanic, whether they rich, whether they were poor, whether they needed help or advice, he was there for everybody. ... He made everybody feel like they were his best friend." Flores' Latino heritage puts him squarely in the Catholic church's fastest-growing segment in California. He called Latinos "a very significant portion of the Diocese" but added that his aim is to assist everyone. "We have to minister not just to the recent immigrants, but there are hundreds of success stories of Hispanics who are doctors and lawyers and professional people whom I hope to meet," Flores said. "We have second- and third-generation Hispanics. "We are named priests and a bishop for all the people, not just a certain segment. Here in the Diocese of Orange, Bishop Tod … made it clear I'd be bishop for all," he said. "And so I've done events for the Vietnamese people. We have a huge Korean population, a huge Vietnamese population. I confirmed at the Polish Center." Flores said he's looking forward to touring the 99 parishes of his new diocese and meeting the nearly million members of its flock. "In a large family, you have all kinds of people, some very educated, some not educated, some very straight-laced morally and some not, some following good paths and some running astray. Like any big family, the church is not a gathering place or a hotel for saints. It's more a hospital for sinners. "This is a new adventure for me," he added. "I come with absolutely no preconceived notions or plans or agenda. … May God use my experience and personal gifts as he sees fit."
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