To our Dear Oratory Benefactors:

It has been some months since Fr. Driscoll and I have communicated with all of you, our dear Oratory benefactors. It has been a challenging year for all of us (we arrived in San Francisco August 2014), but I know that God sanctifies us through difficulties. I think the Archbishop, however, would agree with me that establishing an Oratory has proven to be far more complex than we would have thought. As of Wednesday, with Brother Gabriel’s departure, our Oratory project has been put on hold, and I want to explain where we stand now and what we hope for the future.

I tried my best, but I have to say it is beyond my capacity to both form an Oratorian community and dedicate myself to rebuilding a needy parish, especially in the difficult circumstances in which we found ourselves. We thank God that the Archbishop entrusted us with Star of the Sea, but it has required so much time and energy that little remained to build the community. Much of the parish infrastructure has been rebuilt, and good relations with the wider community is being restored, but more needs to be done before we can provide the peaceful order needed for an Oratorian community to flourish.

The Archdiocese has required our candidates (Brothers Ivan and Gabriel) to be accepted into its seminary program in order to stay with us. We had hoped to send Brother Ivan to St. Patrick’s Seminary this fall, but he has decided to discern instead with the Institute of the Incarnate Word, in which his sister is in formation. Brother Gabriel has also decided to apply to his home Diocese of Pittsburgh, PA, rather than the Archdiocese of San Francisco. We thank God for having had these two men for the year, we will miss them, and we pray for them as they test their vocations elsewhere. Other candidates have asked to discern with us, but we cannot accept them until we receive recognition from the Archdiocese. For his own good reasons, Archbishop Cordileone has decided to await further developments before granting that recognition. I am content with his wisdom. I will focus on my archdiocesan assignment, which is Star of the Sea parish, until he decides to move ahead with the Oratory project.

I want to thank all of you for your sacrificial prayers and financial gifts. You have supported an Oratorian community for this year, which has brought inestimable benefit to the four of us, to our parish, and to our archdiocese. We have prayed our “oratory” before the Blessed Sacrament twice a day together, taken daily meals in common with reading at table, studied the Oratorian Constitutions, read biographies of St. Philip and other Oratory literature writings together, been faithful to community recreations and outings, and put ourselves at the service of the parish and archdiocese. It has been a solid formative year for all of us, and much good has resulted.

Besides the four of us, the parish has also benefitted immensely from your support. We’ve developed a deeper prayer life for the parish; for example, 10-12 laypeople join us for public vespers every evening, a dozen men come together for prayer and fellowship in the Little Oratory twice a month, 60 people come to our parish Holy Hour every Tuesday, many are coming for all-day adoration every Saturday, and our church is now open 12 hours a day for public prayer. Many are making regular confessions because a priest is in the confessional before every Mass. Many are embracing the spirituality of Christian stewardship: Mass attendance, services to the poor, and the Sunday offertory have all increased. We now have 20 young men and boys serving the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Mass. We continue to offer more Latin Masses than any other parish (six days a week) and have improved the sacred music program, including Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony on Sundays, with a children’s chorister program in development.

Among physical improvements are new sound and security systems, upgraded electrical and lighting systems, new carpet, and a cloud-based computer network for the office. We now have a Parish Council, a functioning Finance Council, a parish budget, a website, and a full-color parish bulletin. Parish staff are meeting regularly and now have job descriptions. Adults are learning the Catholic faith through a newly-established RCIA program, weekly bible studies, and occasional courses in prayer and doctrine; the Missionaries of Charity Sisters are teaching our catechism students; and we have good attendance for our Speakers’ Series (Raymond Arroyo spoke in May and Fiorella de Maria last week). On the social level, we have begun monthly parish barbecues, coffee and pastry after Masses, and are planning a parish pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Crucial to the life of this parish, and this archdiocese, is Eucharistic Adoration. Making perpetual adoration available to our parish and the entire city will be our focus this coming year. Donors have given $60,000 for a perpetual adoration chapel, which we hope to open in a few months. Our greatest challenge is getting enough people to commit to regular adoration hours, so please pray for this intention! We thank God for the beautiful parish and school that is Star of the Sea.

Your sacrificial gifts have strengthened this parish, a community with so much potential for good in the City of San Francisco. But where does that leave the Oratory? Archbishop Cordileone has told me that he wants an Oratory and considers San Francisco a perfect place for an Oratorian community. We await his guidance and direct support, which he will provide as God allows. In the meantime, I will remain faithful to my assignment at Star of the Sea parish, doing my best to provide quality preaching and education, beautiful and reverent sacramental liturgy, and pastoral charity, especially to the neediest.

As of right now, we have enough in the Oratory account, to cover Fr. Driscoll’s salary, benefits, and insurance for the next two years.  As the Oratory is on hold, you are under no obligation to continue fulfilling your pledges, but are welcome to do so, to support our apostolate in this parish and archdiocese, as we await the Archbishop’s further direction. God willing, he will provide the means to establish an Oratory in a year or two, and we hope to be a part of that establishment. We cannot thank you enough for your support thus far, and will continue to keep you in our daily prayers and Masses.

Yours in Christ,


Fr. Joseph Illo
Star of the Sea Parish
4420 Geary Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94118

Yesterday St. Philip Neri turned 500. He was born on July 21, 1515, in the city of Florence. He left home a young man, worked a year or two at his uncle’s business in Naples, and then was led “by divine guidance” to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life. He stayed the course, and he stayed put; this affable loyalty to the local people came to mark the Oratorian vocation. There’s something quite winning about a man who is content to spend his entire life in one place, with one set of neighbors. “Keep it local,” as they say.

Today Fr. Frank Filice will lie in state at the San Francisco Cathedral while the Archbishop offers Mass for his soul. He grew up in this city (attending St. Anne’s School), married a local girl, never went farther than the other side of the Bay for his doctorate, taught at the University of San Francisco, suffered the death of his wife, got ordained for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and served the local people for 35 years as their priest. Like St. Philip, and under his patronage, he stayed the course, and stayed put, establishing an Oratory in San Francisco, which lasted a good few years but eventually relocated to Mexico.

On this day, the day after the 500th anniversary of St. Philip’s birth, we can only hope that, with God’s grace, a second attempt to establish an Oratory in San Francisco will take root. This beautiful city provides an ideal setting for the urban and cultural milieu in which Oratories flourish. It’s been a rocky start, in part because the Oratorian way of life is unfamiliar to many and, I must admit, Fr. Driscoll and I have made some well-intentioned but imprudent decisions in the first year. Last month, at the Oxford Oratory, I witnessed the joy that a stable community of priests has brought to a local church. The Oxford Oratory also faced certain difficulties in the first few years, but they stayed the course, and stayed put. We hope to give a birthday gift to St. Philip here in San Francisco: that if it please God, we be permitted the grace to establish the great blessing of an Oratory in San Francisco. We are so grateful to the support we have received from so many priests and laity alike. May God reward you all!

St. Philip’s Octave

Oratorians around the world are celebrating the Octave of St. Philip’s Day, which was Tuesday of this week. On May 26, 1595, about 2am, Good St. Philip died in the Oratory having almost reached 80 years on this earth.

Caesare Baronius, one of his earliest disciples, and one of the first Oratorian cardinals, wept at St. Philip’s deathbed: “Father, are you going to leave us?”

God gave us St. Philip as that rare priest who is naturally, and unabashedly, a father. He was a father to hundreds in Renaissance Rome long before he became a priest (Philip was a late vocation); through his intense interior life—his nights spent in solitude and days serving the poor—Jesus drew him to God the Father, whose divine paternity graced Philip’s every encounter with others. In our own time, when fatherhood is in crisis, the Church recommends St. Philip to us, to reassure us that fatherhood is still possible, and that it is not all that complicated. God gives the grace of fatherhood to those who trust His own fatherhood, who persist in allowing His will to overcome our own. A weak father insists on his own will, his own powers, but a strong father relies, with a good sense of humor and self-deprecation, on the fatherhood of God.

Apostle of Renaissance Rome

The Roman people, and the Roman Church, call St. Paul of Tarsus the First Apostle of their city. But they also call St. Philip of Florence the Second Apostle of Rome. And the Rome St. Philip made his home in 1535 was not unlike Paul’s Rome in that it was undergoing a “renaissance,” shaking with the rebirth of art, ideas, and wealth. St. Philip did not despise anything good in the Renaissance, but neither was he overawed by these new dynamisms of the human spirit. His long nights in the catacombs prepared him to keep human achievements in perspective, bringing a winning humility to the regnant hubris of Renaissance Rome. Though very much alive to the world (he remained a secular priest and commanded his followers to do the same), he kept his heart fixed on heaven. “To obtain perfectly the gift of humility,” St. Philip said, “four things are required: to despise the world, to despise no person, to despise one’s self, to despise being despised.” It is in this insight, I think, that St. Philip reveals his effectiveness as the Second Apostle of Rome.

To despise the world

St. Philip “despised” the world. He refused to let it dazzle him, holding always man’s final end before his mind. “What will you do in life?” he asked a young nobleman. “I plan to study law and become an attorney.” St. Philip pressed him: “And then?” he asked. “And then,” the young man replied, “I will be a successful lawyer.” “And then?” Philip again asked his young friend. “And then people will speak well of me and I’ll have a good reputation. “And then?” came the question once again. “And then I shall lead an easy life and be happy.” St. Philip asked a final time: “And then?” Across the centuries Good St. Philip asks us: where do you want to be at the end of it all? For what are you making such a tremendous exercise of your beautiful human spirit if not for God and heaven?

To despise no man

St. Philip despised no person. Like Mother Teresa of our own time, he saw Christ before him in every man, each made in the image of God. Those who take faith seriously in a secular society are tempted to hold aloof from irreligious people; what have we to do with them, and how can we even hold a meaningful conversation? St. Philip took a keen interest in every man and woman, holding no one in contempt. This was a grace, but a grace to which he responded, sometimes at great personal cost.

To despise myself

St. Philip despised himself. He did not despise the image of God in himself, nor discount the great good that he was to all of humanity. But he knew every man needs to offset the egocentrism inherent in all who inhabit their own skins. So he did his best not to take himself too seriously, often using an odd humor to deprecate his own and others’ egos. People shook their heads, some considering him completely loony, at the crazy stunts he pulled off among Rome’s gentile classes.

To despise sadness

And finally, St. Philip despised being despised. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think he is taking a stick to overly pious and fraudulent asceticism. Plenty of us think that our sufferings, of themselves, our being despised by the world in itself, is a sure sign of our true holiness. Not so, says St. Philip. In the end, it is joy, not moroseness, which manifests true holiness. This last “requirement for true humility,” to despise being despised, puts humility back into God’s hands. We cannot manufacture our own humility, or our one sanctity. We can only commend ourselves, with loving trust and true joy, into God’s hands. It is this carefree joy that marks St. Philip’s life, and, let us hope, his sons in the Oratory he founded. 

Some have asked for a progress report on the San Francisco Oratory. We are now four members of the community—two priests and two brothers. Gabriel Crawford joined us last month from Pittsburgh, PA, where he had been active in the Oratory Community in that city. We pray together twice a day: in the morning we pray from 6:15 to 7am in the little rectory chapel, including the liturgy of the hours and prayers to St. Philip. In the evening we pray in the church from 5 to 5:30pm with eight to ten people who join us for vespers from the breviary (all are welcome). We have dinner every night together, at which one of the brothers reads from the life of St. Philip and another spiritual book during our meal. We take thirty minutes of “recreation” together in our community room after dinner. Once a week we do some cultural event together, such as a museum or concert, and once a month we have a “chapter” meeting to discuss house business. We all attend personal spiritual direction and try to take one day of solitude a month at a monastery or other place of silence. Other priests join us from time to time, either for a day or several days, or simply for prayers and dinner. We will be starting the “Brothers of the Little Oratory,” a men’s’ group that meets weekly for prayer, discussion, and fellowship, on April 15 at 7pm in the rectory. Please see our website or call the office for more information.

The heart of the Oratory is fraternal charity, after the example and through the intercession of St. Philip. We hope to persevere in our aspiration to build this community of priests and brothers at Star of the Sea, bound by the mighty bond of charity.

Early Sunday morning I knelt before the tabernacle in a large empty church in a big city. The church is my church, Star of the Sea in San Francisco. My prayer is distracted by thinking of all the work that must be done to keep this parish alive. In New York, Archbishop Dolan is closing 31 parishes and merging another 81. One of them is the church in which I was baptized, Star of the Sea in the Bronx. When the Archbishop of San Francisco asked me to take Star of the Sea here, I told him confidently that I could certainly bring more life into the parish. But kneeling in this vast empty church, my confidence is waning. Confidence in myself, that is.

Over the past 20 years of parish work in the Central Valley, I worked hard and expected people to respond. People did respond—our Mass attendance, lay apostolates, and income doubled in a few years. That made me feel good, and naturally led to the pride common in successful pastors. Now, however, kneeling in this vast empty church, I get the feeling that it is humility time. I begin to see that nothing I do will double the number of Catholics coming to this parish. There’s too much competition for their time and money in this city; secularism has devastated family life in San Francisco. I can’t drive success here like I did in Modesto.

I’m 53 years old and it’s time to surrender to God. In the first 25 years of the priesthood, I worked at a frenzied pace, depending a lot on myself. As I get older, God is giving me the gift of weakness, so that He may be strong. As my aging father said recently, “I’m getting too old to keep denying reality.” The reality is, it is God who grants the increase.  Even if He is pleased to accept our help, He certainly doesn’t depend on it.

So I stay in this empty church, and it is God I find in it, not myself. He has largely erased my own powers, and the affirmation that comes to a priest when his church bursts with people. In a greater measure, then, I have found the only beauty and love that never wanes, but only grows brighter with time. God has brought me to this vast empty church to find Him, in whom my heart is glad.

Yesterday I celebrated an anniversary: one official week at Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco. So far, in my honeymoon phase, I’ve have enjoyed every minute. I’m getting to know the neighborhood and have found the essentials: a bank branch, a dry cleaners, a real Chinese restaurant (an excellent meal for $7), and a barbershop, all within walking distance.

Our first parish staff meeting was full of smiles and good cheer, and all wanted to know more about the Oratory. Our parish secretary, however, brought up an arresting observation. In her charming Irish brogue, Carmel related that someone had read in the archdiocesan newspaper that Oratorian Fathers do not take vows. “Does that mean our new priests are not bound by a vow of chastity?”

You, dear readers, probably know this, but for the record: Oratorian priests have already made the vows (or “promises””) that all priests make: lifelong celibacy, obedience to the bishop, and daily praying of the breviary. Most religious orders make additional vows (e.g, the Missionaries of Charity vow “free and wholehearted service to the poorest of the poor,” etc.), but Oratorians stick to the original three. So, yes, we have committed ourselves to chastity in our state in life, which is celibacy: to lifelong virginity of body and soul.

An Oratory is essentially a group of parish priests living in community, in the manner most parish priests did 30 years ago, when priests would pray the breviary in common every day and eat together. Fr. Driscoll and I pray 45 minutes in the morning in the church, and 30 minutes in the evening. We take at least one meal a day together, and try to pray the rosary together every day. Lay folk are welcome to join us for morning prayer in the church at 7am, and evening prayer at 5:15pm.

Yesterday I celebrated another anniversary: one official week in the “Oratory-in-Formation” of San Francisco. We are at the very beginning of what only the good God knows will become of us. I realized with great conviction this morning in prayer that we cannot do this. If anything good comes of this initiative, it will be all God’s grace. We are learning to live together, to pray together, and how to love one another in Christ. There have already been some small bumps, and it is not an easy thing for two middle-aged men to adapt to a new way of life. But I am firmly convinced that this is the will of God, our sanctification. And as we all know, each one’s personal way of sanctification is the sanctification of all.

It is a Sunday morning in Washington, and I am waiting to fly to Rio de Janeiro to give a retreat to the Missionaries of Charity. My family had our best reunion in years yesterday, with heartfelt love expressed across four generations and many branches of the family tree. My brothers and I had many good bike rides in our hometown, in particular one lovely cruise as a golden-orange sun set behind Blue Mountain, the mother-guardian of my youth, against which all my childhood was framed and protected. We laughed and joked as we pedaled through the town that God gave us to grow up in, rejoicing to be together. As our family grows older, it grows also in love. Astrophysicists tell us the universe is continually expanding, galaxies and stellar systems relentlessly distancing themselves from each other. Unconsciously, we think that this is the way of friendship and family as well, that we all get busy, and become less connected as time and circumstances relentlessly pull us apart. But that is not what is happening to my family, although it has in the past. Now we are drawing closer, with deeper love and understanding as we grow older—as we approach the jumping-off point for the Eternal Banquet Feast of the Lamb (God willing).

Tomorrow, May 26th, is the Feast Day of St. Philip Neri, who was born into eternal life 419 years ago. Happy Birthday, St. Philip! You might know that your scribe will be moving to Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco August 1, hoping to establish an Oratory of St. Philip. We hope to form a community of priests and brothers who live as St. Philip did in his Roman parish of Santa Maria in Vallicella (St. Mary’s of the Little Valley) during the Renaissance.

How did St. Philip live? Well, he was a mystic, an extraordinary saint given wondrous gifts. He was given, above all, an almost unbelievably burning love for Jesus, such that upon his death his heart was found to have grown to three times its normal size, breaking several ribs. During the Mass, his heart beat rapidly as he went into ecstasy, and he sometimes floated a few inches above the marble floor. It was enough, for someone suffering from a burden on his heart, for Father Philip to press that man’s head to his own heart, to relieve his sorrow and grant great joy.

It is this supernatural joy that we hope to live among our small band of brothers in San Francisco. It is the joy of knowing Jesus, of knowing that God the Father sees us and loves us and provides for us. It is the joy of knowing the Holy Spirit of God within ourselves and each other. In today’s first reading, from Acts 8, another Philip (the Apostle), goes to Samaria to “proclaim the Christ to them.” With one accord, we read, the people paid attention, and “there was great joy in that city.” If only we, too, following Philip the Apostle and Philip Neri the “Apostle of Rome,” could become apostles of San Francisco! If only, through their intercession and by the grace of God, we too, secular priests that we are, could radiate that joy to an often sad and dysfunctional but beautiful city! San Francisco is not so different from the Rome of Philip’s time or the Samaria of Philip’s time. I believe everyone can radiate the joy of knowing that we are loved, and loved infinitely. It depends on prayer, really. If you are having difficulty in your marriage, pray, and you will find the joy again. If you have sickness in your body, or distress at work, or in your family, or find your state in life empty, pray to God, and you will recover that joy. It is for joy that God made us.

I thank God for my family here in Pennsylvania (how much love and joy we had these past few days!), and I thank him for my future family in San Francisco. Happy St. Philip’s Day!

I’m sorry that I haven’t posted a homily in two weeks (thanks to those who have reminded me—it’s nice to be missed!). You may be interested in how homilies become blog posts: the homily gets written by Saturday, preached two or three times on Sunday, and edited for posting Sunday night (unless there are lots of student volleyball games). “Editing” means straining out the written parts that in fact proved less compelling in the actual preaching. These Eastertide readings, though, are compelling enough even without the preaching. Take this, for example from last Sunday’s Mass:

“The community of believers was of one heart and mind… devoting themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” This glimpse of the Early Church, the great Springtime of humanity after the Resurrection, fills every Christian’s heart with longing for what once was. It particularly fills a parish priest’s heart, because we know how empty “rectory living” can be. One of the great scandals in the Church today, of which many other scandals derive, is the coldness and emptiness of your parish priest’s personal life. The average diocesan priest doesn’t live even a minimally community life: he doesn’t share his faith or even minimally fraternal towards the men with whom he lives. He either lives alone or he lives as a loner with other loners in big rectories. Most live as comfortable but loveless bachelors. I’ve lived in some pretty lonely rectories in my time, rectories that almost completely incapacitate priests from the joy that is rightfully theirs, rectories that extinguish the zeal the Church needs from her priests. It is not good for anyone that so many priests live isolated from real human community.

Sunday’s first reading concludes: “Awe came upon everyone … They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.” Every priest, unless he is completely jaded, wants to enjoy this kind of fraternal charity, so essential to the very identity of priests! The Oratory is one way to renew the essential fraternal dimension of the priesthood.

People are asking me: what is the “Oratory?” What do you hope to gain by establishing it in San Francisco? The essence of the Oratory, I would say, is Fraternal Charity. It’s the kind of community we see in those early chapters of Acts. In August, Fr. Patrick Driscoll (a dear friend from the Archdiocese of St. Louis) and I will become the parish priests of St. Mary, Star of the Sea in San Francisco. We will pastor a parish, of course, and support its school, and work on other pastoral initiatives as the Archbishop directs us. But none of our work will be effective if we don’t first “devote ourselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2). On the most human level, we first need to “eat our meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God ….” The Oratory will provide secular priests with a community in which to live fraternal charity, in order that they might render authentic priestly service. Charity begins at home, but most priests don’t have a home.

Every day here at TAC three of us priests, with some students and teachers, pray the morning office together. I can’t describe the joy and energy with which these prayers fill me. Never do I love my brothers more than when I am praying with them from the heart. This is what we hope for in the Oratory: a common life of prayer, familiar discourse on the Word of God, and the continual exercise of fraternal charity. Oratorians do not take vows, as do religious order priests. St. Philip wanted his sons to live together with no other bond than the gentle but mighty bond of charity. He hoped that their lives and preaching would imitate that of the first Christians.

It will be a tricky business, bound by nothing beyond the gentle bonds of fraternal charity. We will have to depend entirely on God’s grace and forget ourselves. We ask your prayers.

Welcome to Lent, our annual 40-day retreat from the vanities, stresses, and disappointments of this world. The slight fasting the Church requires of us on Ash Wednesday gives us a “taste” of what focused, heartfelt prayer might be in our lives. My body’s demands have been stilled (“stay still now!”), and it seems a wide and clean horizon stretches before me. Lent’s empty landscape affords me room enough to move, to make real progress toward God, to find him in the silence. I have the feeling on this first day of Lent that I have on the first day of a weeklong retreat, that of the deep stillness in which God waits for me.

Back to earth for just a minute: we have surpassed our pledge goal for the San Francisco Oratory. Our hope was to raise $220,000, and thus far we have received pledges of $268,520. I’m quite encouraged by the hope and enthusiasm this idea has received. Many pledges of financial and prayer support have come from folks in San Francisco, so I know we will receive a warm welcome in the City when we arrive (God willing). 

There are a few details yet to be worked out, but some of them have worked out, and I hope we will be able to begin building our priestly community this summer. Keep the prayers coming, and let us all beg God’s continued grace this Lent, that He prosper the work of our hands according to His good pleasure.

Your prayers, fasting, and sacrifices are the most important thing the fledgling San Francisco Oratory of St. Philip Neri needs from you today. There are still some non-financial pieces of the puzzle that only God can fit together.  Please pray especially for the priests, brothers, bishops and archbishops involved.

A special thank you to everyone who has pledged to pray and support the oratory thus far; we are halfway into the pledge drive and your generosity has helped us attain 54% of our monetary goal!

I sent out confirmation e-mails to everyone who made a pledge as of Sunday night. I am at a priests' workshop through Friday with limited internet and so I will send acknowledgements for all who pledged since Sunday a when I get back to the College on Friday. Thank you all!

Technical Difficulties with Pledges

A number of you had trouble entering pledges directly into the e-mail you received last week because the “Submit” button was not working.  Our webmaster sincerely apologizes for this.  If this was the case for you and you did not receive a confirmation e-mail from me, please consider re-submitting your pledge on the official Pledge Page by following the link below.  As pledges come in, any duplicates are taken out, so feel free to submit your pledge again if you had trouble submitting it last week, or if you made your pledge before Sunday and did not receive a confirming e-mail from me yet.

       Link to San Francisco Oratory Pledge Drive >> 

For anyone interested in mailing a pledge in on paper, please click here to access the PDF and try to mail it in by February 26th.

Again, thank you for your continued support! Please pray also for us fifteen priests at a Corpus Christi Movement workshop until Friday. The priests (from six countries) give retreats or direction to the Missionaries of Charity, and we are being trained to give retreats and spiritual direction using the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. It’s been wonderful so far!