FROM THE TIME HE was young, Fr. Christopher Heath appeared to have a relatively clean, uncluttered path to life. He sought only to be a parish priest —to celebrate the Eucharist and to tend to the spiritual needs of his parishioners.
FR. CHRISTOPHER HEATH, THE DIRECTOR OF THE DIOCESAN ARCHIVES, AND DANIELLA MOSQUEDA, ASSISTANT ARCHIVIST, DELICATELY AND METICULOUSLY REMOVE A DOCUMENT FROM A FRAME SO THAT IT CAN BE DIGITALLY SCANNED IN AN OFFICE IN THE BELL TOWER OF MISSION BASILICA IN SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO. PHOTO BY JEFF ANTENORE/DIOCESE OF ORANGE
The oldest of four boys, Fr. Chris followed that path— from altar boy to high school and seminary —leading to his ordination in 1988 in the Diocese of Orange. For the next 33 years he happily served as a parish priest. Then, in 2021, Fr. Chris was appointed by Bishop Kevin Vann as archivist of the diocese, where he replaced Fr. Bill Krekelberg, the original archivist who had retired in 2016, leaving the position vacant. When the appointment came, it astonished Fr. Chris. He had no experience with archives, no training and no education in library sciences. He was flummoxed.
Fr. Chris was thrust into overseeing every piece of parish history, past and present, down to the last scrap.
“I thought, ‘Why me?’ Was I being punished?” Fr. Chris says jokingly.
Parishioners were equally puzzled.
“You’re a good priest, we need you in the parish,” he said of the feedback he received. “Why would they take you out of the parish and put you in a windowless room by yourself?”
During his years as a parish priest, Fr. Chris says he didn’t even know that he was responsible for individual parish archives.
“I just thought it was all this stuff.”
A well-spoken, quick-witted, popular and insightful speaker, Fr. Chris is well suited as a public-facing advocate and spokesman for the Catholic Church.
However, the bishop had wisdom that the pastor and his flock didn’t recognize at the time. Fr. Chris had qualifications no parchments, seminars or teachings could replace. While he may have lacked learned history, Fr. Chris was steeped in the lived history of the diocese. Before there was a separate diocese, Fr. Chris was raised Catholic in Orange County. Holy Family was his home church. His mother, Bonnie, was a primary photographer for the diocese during its formation. This meant a constant stream of church leaders visiting their home.
“Every priest had to come to our house for photographs,” Fr. Chris said.
Although other priests may have similar institutional knowledge, Fr. Chris added, “I’m the youngest of the old guys.”
Fr. Chris said he didn’t always recognize the knowledge he was gaining. For instance, he can glance at a photograph, even a posed group and individual portrait from the early days of the diocese and know if it was by his mother simply by her framing and style.
Of course, Bishop Vann knew all about Bonnie Heath.
Shortly after taking the job, “Without really thinking about it, I realized, ‘Oh, gosh, my mom set me up. She set me up,’” Fr. Chris said with a laugh.
A BIG TASK
The size and scope of the undertaking is overwhelming, even with the hiring of Daniella Mosqueda as archives assistant. Early in his tenure, Fr. Chris said his predecessor had been invaluable before his death.
“I would look at him with big saucer eyes and say, ‘What the heck am I doing?’”
About his duties, Fr. Chris jokingly said, “We’re like the dead letter offices of the Post Office. Anything that happens in the diocese is archive material.”
That includes sacramental records and storing every photograph, video and audio recording. Every diocesan notice, bulletin, directory, map, folio and publication —printed or electronic. Not to mention every commemoration, letter, award, gift, trinket or gewgaw. Oh, and their provenance. Fr. Heath also oversees a massive trove from the late Dr. Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral Ministries, which sold the campus to the Catholic Church.
And as anyone knows, Catholics love to keep records.
Many are in different forms reflective of technology. There are drawers and cabinets of microfilm, reel-to-reel and U-matic tapes, which are an early video format. All need to be digitized before they degrade beyond recovery.
The Diocese of Orange archives span a remarkable breadth in time and space, from a document signed by Abraham Lincoln giving the Mission of San Juan Capistrano back to the Church to a moon rock. An actual tiny piece of moon rock presented to Msgr. Lloyd Russell by the crew of Apollo 15.
The archives are home to the original founding Vatican documents of the diocese’s creation and appointment of Bishop William Johnson, one-of-a-kind documents.
In addition to the holy items, there are those that are wholly silly. Take, for example, Bill the Bear, a teddy bear Bishop William Johnson placed at his desk when he was out of the office. The bear was outfitted with a hidden microphone and when children toured the bishop’s office, a church official would speak to children and answer questions through the set-up.
“We think of the diocese as this big, formal institution, but Bill Johnson had fun with it,” Fr. Chris said.
All of this is crammed into the bell tower at Mission San Juan Capistrano where it occupies every inch of file, desk, drawer, wall and surface space.
Since before he took the job, Fr. Chris said efforts have been underway to find space on the Christ Cathedral campus, and he expects that to continue past his retirement.
Still, Fr. Chris is grateful beyond words. “Doing this has been the Lord’s work,” he said in a recent address to the Orange Diocesan Council of Catholic Women. “I get to tell the story of the Church in Orange County. And my mom gets to point the way.”