When I heard that people were asking for prayers for the family of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, I assumed that he’d died of natural causes as most bishops do, in the absence of persecution.
A friend told me that when he heard that a Bishop had been murdered, he thought it must be a gay thing.
And I couldn’t help thinking, when I heard the bishop had been murdered by his housekeeper’s husband, that it might be an old-fashioned heterosexual scandal, like the one involving Bishop of Galway in the 1990s.
Bishop O’Donnell is an Irish immigrant himself, which is why the Guardian refers to him as an Irish Bishop, but he’s been in the U.S. since the 80s .
Los Angeles police arrest suspect in fatal shooting of Catholic bishophttps://t.co/wP6vNBOIkg
— She/He (@sirimahanthesh) February 21, 2023
The Irish Times referred to him as a ”Liberal Bishop,” i.e., what the Catholic Encyclopedia would call a ”heretic”:
R4R Live: Pray for the repose of +David O’Connell+, hyper-radical Los Angeles aux. bishop who was murdered in his home late last week.
— Timothy Gordon (Rules for Retrogrades Show) (@timotheeology) February 20, 2023
Huge supporter of gay marriage and female ordination, this strange underreported story is starting to remind me of https://t.co/eIA8Ekjn5p…
But of course, he was also a liberal in politics, especially on illegal immigration.
The student newspaper of Loyola Marymount University has a story that says
O’Connell was a founder of the Southern California Immigration Task Force, a group focused on helping children immigrating alone to the United States. He served as a religious figure within the Southern California area since 1979, and had been very active in helping those in need, according to LA Catholics.
“His profile, as priest and bishop, correlated perfectly with the Beatitudes that Jesus taught in the Gospel. That is why the care of migrants, refugees, strangers, the homeless, LGBTQ+, the excluded and forgotten were all passionate causes for him. Nor was he afraid to fight for justice, for human dignity and rights, especially by supporting community organizations that advocate for and empower people on the margins,” Deck added.
[LMU religious community reflects on Bishop David O’Connell’s life following his alleged homicide, by Andrew Kim and Julia King, Los Angeles Loyolan, February 20, 2023]
Well, he was shot by a man named Carlos Medina, the 61-year-old husband of his presumably not much younger housekeeper, who’s not implicated, according to police, over the kind of resentment that leads to what we call ”Disgruntled Minority Massacres”:
A housekeeper’s husband was arrested near Los Angeles on Monday in connection with the fatal shooting of a Catholic bishop, who might’ve been killed over a financial beef, officials said.
Two days after the body of Bishop David O’Connell was found in his Hacienda Heights home, 61-year-old Carlos Medina was taken into custody in Torrance after a standoff with law enforcement, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert G. Luna said.
Medina’s wife is O’Connell’s housekeeper and she was not implicated or publicly identified.
Housekeeper’s husband is arrested in fatal shooting of ‘peacemaker’ Catholic bishop
The suspect, Carlos Medina, 61, had said Bishop David O’Connell owed him money, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert G. Luna told reporters.
By Mirna Alsharif and Dennis Romero, NBC, February 20, 2023
Here’s what we don’t know about Carlos Medina: Is he a native-born Mexican-American? Is he a legal Mexican immigrant? Is he an illegal Mexican immigrant?
It’s quite likely that a Bishop who was so much a supporter of illegal immigration would give a job to an illegal immigrant couple, but we aren’t likely to be told.
Both the LAPD and the LA County Sheriff’s Department aren’t interested in the immigration status of criminals, and the Mainstream Media is deliberately uninterested in the immigration status of criminals, so the only way we’ll know if this guy is a Mexican immigrant is if there’s a report of the Mexican Consul showing up to complain that his rights were violated.
