THIRTY-ONE MINUTES and nine seconds. That’s how long it took to read each of the 389 names of the unhoused lives lost on the streets of Orange County this year.
The ninth annual Homeless Persons’ Inter-Religious Memorial Service took place at Lutheran Church of the Cross in Laguna Woods on Dec. 21 — the longest night of the year. For each name read, a candle was lit and carried across the church sanctuary.
“We state clearly together, with others in scores of communities across the nation, that their life is of value,” said Paul Kratzer, vice president and council member of the Lutheran Church of the Cross.
Orange County started the service in 2016, when 193 lives were lost. For the last several years, the leading cause of death has been drug and alcohol overdoses, said Gina Marie Seriel, founder and CEO of Our Father’s Table, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the cycle of chronic homelessness.
“This does not take away or minimize the undeniable fact that living on the streets takes a significant deadly toll on the body,” Seriel added. “The mortality rate among folks experiencing homelessness is 3.5 times the mortality rate of housed individuals.”
The interfaith memorial brought out representatives from the Catholic, Bahá’í, Muslim, Lutheran, Christian Scientist, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist faiths. The Diocese of Orange was among the event sponsors.
The service coincided with purple flags planted around the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange campus in Orange in memory of the homeless who died in 2024.
The religious leaders noted that their respective faiths call to help the poor and marginalized and treat all as brothers and sisters regardless of faith, ethnicity or distance.
In Islam, caring for the vulnerable is not considered an act of charity, but a fundamental expression of faith, said Deana Helmy of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.
“Homelessness is not simply a condition; it is a reflection of systemic iniquities and collective neglect,” Helmy said. “Our faiths teach us to see beyond labels and circumstances, recognizing that dignity is God given, and it cannot be stripped by poverty or circumstance.”
Fr. Greg Walgenbach, director of the Diocese’s Office of Life, Justice & Peace, reiterated calls to love one another with the reading of Psalm 84 and the First Letters of St. John, Chapters 3 and 4.
“We love because He first loved us,” Fr. Greg quoted. “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother who he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
Orange County’s service is a localized version of a national event that started in 1990 to honor those who have died on the streets each year, Seriel said.
“We wanted to honor those who died in our community, in our neighborhoods of Orange County,” Seriel said.
“In many cases, this service will be the only commemoration of their lives.”