Red Mass offers prayers for those who serve the law

Intermountain Catholic

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During the Sept. 16 Red Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City (center), listens to the Gospel, proclaimed by Deacon Mike Bulson, who also is a civil attorney. Concelebrating the Mass with Bishop Wester were (from left) are Maronite Corbishop William Leser, who has been temporarily assigned to Saint Jude Parish; Monsignor Joseph Mayo, pastor of the Cathedral of the Madeleine; Father Langes Silva, judicial vicar and vice-chancellor of the Diocese of Salt Lake City; Father Eleazar Silva, parochial vicar of the Cathedral; and Father Michael Sciumbato, pastor of Saint Ann Parish and also an attorney. IC photo/Marie Mischel

SALT LAKE CITY — Carrying on a centuries-old tradition, the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, celebrated a Red Mass on Sept. 16 to honor all those in the legal profession. The first recorded Red Mass was celebrated in 1245 in the Cathedral of Paris; the local Red Mass is modeled after the one celebrated in Washington, D.C. just prior to the convening of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Among those who attended this year’s event were Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham, Utah Third Judicial District Judge Donald Sawaya, a group of judges visiting from the Ukraine, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank and Brigadier General Jefferson S. Burton, Assistant Adjutant General of the Utah Army National Guard.

"This was a great opportunity… to come together and reflect on our social responsibility and criminal justice responsibility and our service to our community," Gill said in an interview after the Mass. "It’s so wonderful to see so many different people from so many different faiths come together in service to our community and celebrate that responsibility that we all share."

Ron J. Yengich, a criminal defense attorney and Cathedral of the Madeleine parishioner, helped organize the first local Red Mass four years ago.

"It just seemed to me that it would be a good idea if we as Catholic judges and lawyers and police officers got together and had a Mass for justice," Yengich said.

He also helped start the Saint Thomas More group, an ecumenical group of attorneys who "talk about matters of justice as they relate to natural law and to God and to the deeper meaning of the law in justice, more so than just the things that are in law books."

Many of those who attended the Red Mass aren’t Catholic, Yengich said, but "it brings people together who are in an adversarial relationship every day, every minute of every day, and they’re able to see their fellow lawyers and judges and police officers in a little different light. I think it brings us closer together."

In his homily, Bishop Wester said the Mass was a chance to pray for and with those who enact, enforce and practice the law, and for those who judge. "We pray particularly for you because we recognize that you are caught up in this tension between the ideal law, the ideal justice and the way that the ideal is lived out in our very real world," he said.

It’s not easy to deal with bureaucracy, temptations, personal pressures and politics, Bishop Wester said, "and yet you are called to work in our community to uphold the law. To be for us the law in our midst, to personify the law and all that is good about it. To be instruments of the truth, to be instruments of justice and in so doing to be touched by God who is the ultimate truth, the ultimate justice in our lives …. We give thanks to Almighty God for you all at this Mass as we pray for you, your safety and your wellbeing."