Interfaith Prayer Service on Zoom, Thu, Dec 11th at 12:15 PM (note special day) for the 34 People "Without Fixed Abode" who died in Dec 2023 in OC

 

All are invited to a Zoom Interfaith Memorial Prayer Service on Thursday, January 11th (note the special day) at 12:15 PM for the 34 people who died "Without Fixed Abode" in OC in December, 2023 as well as the 2 others who died in November, 2023, but whose death was recorded only now.  Zoom  info below.

All told, 499 people "without fixed abode" currently have died in the County this year (and as has been generally the case, 1-2 others will have died in December, who'll be remembered only next month, so the number will break 500 for the year).   Last year the death toll at this point in the year was 490.  This is a 5% increase for the year over last, and an equivalent of  8.7% of the County's homeless population (counted to be 5718 in the last PIT Count conducted in January 2022) died in this County in 2023, a mortality rate over twenty times (20x) higher than the mortality rate in the general population.

Eulogy to Joseph Saenz:

Finally, among those who died this past month was Joseph Saenz who the St. Philip Benizi community had come to know quite well.  

Truthfully, he was one of the more problematic persons who would come to our parish for respite.  I would at times refer to him (generally affectionately, though also with some frustration) as "our resident Gerasene Demoniac" (cf Mark 5:1-20).  

Over the past year, he did break several of our windows, including one big one right at the entrance of our Church on the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend (not a good time to try to get things fixed...).

And he was perhaps best known to our Parish as having entered one morning our Parish Hall while a group was having a meeting.  While thankfully just walking past the largely older people present, he started throwing things that he found about the Hall (most memorably _big_ plastic jars of mayonnaise that were on a pallet brought in by our St. Vincent de Paul Society to be distributed at a later date)

That all said, we have also have security cam footage of him walking around and then praying in front of the lovely statue of Mary and the Servite Founders in our plaza at night.  And he would do this quite frequently.

In the last months of his life, his mother, sister and I were trying to get him help through the new Care Court Program.  His Court Date, postponed last month to after the New Year, would have been on January 9th.  

He died, hit by a train on railroad tracks that pass to the north of our Parish on the night of Dec. 22nd.  At St Philips's as a Christian community we do believe that he is at peace in a better place.  But most of us who knew him do wish we had been able to more effectively help him when he was with us.      

And so we pray... 

 Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83641913998

Meeting ID: 836 4191 3998
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Prayer Service Text --  https://tinyurl.com/ya9sojzk 

The List of the Names of OC's Homeless Deceased in Dec 2023 -  http://tinyurl.com/OCHomelessDeaths-12-2023