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Steve Pehanich is Senior Director of Advocacy and Education for the California Catholic Conference. He is responsible for leadership of the Catholic Legislative Network – a partnership of the 12 Catholic arch/dioceses in the state and the California Catholic Conference.
The Network informs Catholics, and other like-minded people, about public policy issues in Sacramento and Washington in order to help them evaluate those issues in the light of Catholic social teaching.
Pehanich spent many years in public relations for aerospace, engineering and business firms. In the mid-1990s he became executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Santa Clara County. In that role helped the Society in the United States expand its advocacy efforts.
He has a BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MBA from Santa Clara University. He and his wife, Loretta, live in Sacramento.
When elected as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, Pope Francis made a bold statement in selecting the name of a saint known for his care of the environment and love of the poor.
Sometime this summer, he is expected to release his first encyclical and the topic - human ecology - may be just as bold, if not a lot more controversial.
There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. (Luke 16: 19-20)
U.S. Census data recently showed that 5.6 million people in the Golden State live below the poverty line – nearly one in seven Californians. Sadly, two million of them are children.
“This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcome and protected,” said Pope Francis in a message about the large number of unaccompanied children seeking safety from the violence of their Central American homes. [1]
The concept that people seek safety and security did not start when the media noticed the children crossing the border or when one government or another failed to solve a problem.
Survival is as basic a human instinct as it gets.