Francis P. Filice
Encyclopedia
Francis Patrick Filice (born on August 19, 1922) is an American priest
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco
. Filice is Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of San Francisco
(1947–1976), founder of United for Life of San Francisco (1968), co-founder of the St. Ignatius Institute
(1976), co-founder of Priests for Life
(1991), and founder of the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
province of Southern Italy
. Filice theorizes that his father's family were Jews who took refuge in Southern Italy after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Filice's grandmothers were Rafaella Fortino and Nicolina Pascuzzi, both of whose families descended from the mountain peoples of Celtic descent in Southern Italy. These tribes descend from the Boii
, a Celt
ic people that specialized in cattle raising and filled up the Apennines in Roman times.
The name "Filice" is theorized to be either a form of the word for "fern" in the Southern Italian dialect (in which case, the accent should be on the first 'i') or a corruption of the Latin word for "happy", which is "felix". Both Filice and Joseph G. Fucilla, in his book Our Italian Surnames, support the latter theory.
The Filice Family, into which Fr. Filice would be born, went to the United States
from Rogliano, a small town near Cosenza
in Calabria. After spending some time in Washington State, they settled in Gilroy and Hollister, agriculturally-oriented cities south of San Francisco, near San Jose
. In Gilroy and Hollister, they owned various types of orchards.
in August 1922. He was the firstborn son of Francis and Antoinette Filice. The elder Francis Filice died before his son's birth.
Filice grew up on Judah Street
in San Francisco's inner Sunset District, but he also spent much of his childhood with his cousins in Gilroy and Hollister. When he was a young boy, his widowed mother married Francis Garofalo, a barber in San Francisco. They had two children, Gabriel Garofalo, who died in infancy, and Gloria Garofalo Pizzinelli. Mrs. Pizzinelli inhabits the family home on Judah Street to this day and has three children of her own, as well as ten grandchildren.
Filice graduated from St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic School in 1935. He attended Polytechnic High School, and then the Christian Brothers' Sacred Heart High School
, where he distinguished himself academically.
. In 1949, he earned the Ph.D. at the same University of California, Berkeley. He published his doctoral dissertation Studies on the Cytology and Life History of a Giardia From the Laboratory Rat (Berkeley: University of California Press) in 1952.
Among Filice's scholarly work in the field of parasitology
was a study based upon his doctoral research to characterize the life cycle of the medically significant parasite causing Giardiasis
.
In the early 1950s, Filice and co-workers investigated levels of amino acids in the body tissues of various marine invertebrates including seastars, sea urchins and spoon worms. They were the first to demonstrate that various marine invertebrates maintain high concentrations of amino acids in their tissues in comparison to vertebrate animals.
Later in that decade, Filice embarked on a scientific expedition to Baja California, and he was a leader in the "Save The Bay" organization and movement in San Francisco, which sought to deter City planners from filling in the San Francisco Bay
in order to increase development of the Bay Area. In this respect, he published three significant studies in the field of marine ecology:
Prior to the late 1960s, abortion
was illegal in every state of the United States
, except in cases where the pregnancy
posed a risk to the mother's life. This changed in 1967 when Colorado
became the first state to legalize abortion in cases of rape
, incest
, or when there was a threat of permanent disability to the pregnant women. During this period, when the topic of overpopulation
first became widely discussed, Filice recalls that not a month would pass when he did not receive, as a biology professor at USF
, a free copy of a textbook which called into question population growth
. The first such book was The Population Bomb
. Dr. Filice found the arguments made in such books unconvincing and began to speak against them at various meetings.
At this time, Filice was invited to participate in a panel discussing concerns over population at a local high school, by a former student of his who was teaching biology. In his observation, the speakers affiliated with Planned Parenthood
and the representative of the Human Population Institute of Stanford only talked about how to get an abortion, without addressing the population question at all. This concerned Filice, and, as a result, he called the chancery
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to ask what they were doing to respond. Finding out that they did not have a plan for action, Filice asked if they minded if he tried something. The Chancellor of the Archdiocese told him to go ahead.
Filice had a student, John Martin, who had become a Lutheran
, and, when Filice expressed his concern about how things were developing, this student told him that his pastor had expressed the same concerns. As a result, he invited his pastor to have lunch with Filice at USF. Pastor Kangas was pastor of the Finnish Lutheran Church of St. Francis on Church Street in San Francisco. Pastor Kangas was from Ohio
and Filice found him to be a very spiritual man.
Filice also invited to the lunch meeting Eileen Ziomeck (now Dr. Aicardi, a pediatrician
in San Francisco), who, in Filice's words, was "smartest student I ever had". The four people who attended the luncheon decided to start an educational group aimed at countering the claims regarding population growth made in the media.
Pastor Kangas knew an Episcopalian
minister who was of the same mind. He was Rev. Charles Carroll, chaplain at UCSF
and pastor of the church that is now the Catholic chapel of St. John of God. Rev. Carroll had been a Catholic, at one time, but now served under the Episcopalian Bishop of San Francisco. His presence on the committee added a socially upscale quality to the movement.
So the four contacted Rev. Carroll and called a meeting. St. Mary’s Hospital let them use a meeting room. No doctors were at the meeting. Those in attendance at this first meeting were: Filice, Eileen Ziomeck, John Martin, John Galten, Clayton Barbeau (a Catholic author), Rev. Bernie Bush, S.J., Rev. Theodore Taheny, S.J., Rev. Carroll, Pastor Kangas, Bob Augros (a philosophy professor at USF), and others whom Filice cannot remember. He does remember that there were fourteen people present.
They decided that the political problem was impractical to address directly, and that what was needed was an educational group to counter the arguments of the pro-choice
movement. Filice remembers going around the room and asking each if they wanted to be chairman, but each of them declined. So, by default, Filice became the chairman of this emergent pro-life
group in San Francisco. Thus was born United for Life of San Francisco.
United for Life met every two weeks for the next seven years. At their first official meeting, Dr. Raymond Dennehy came up from Santa Clara University
, where he taught philosophy. Dr. Augros and he took the task of countering the arguments of their opposition, and they developed a pamphlet in question-and-answer form that became the source of arguments against abortion for all the pro-life groups in the United States. This pamphlet was the basis, later, of a book by Dr. Willkie from Ohio.
United for Life developed the first pro-life newsletter in the United States and contacted all the groups in California and the United States. In most densely-populated areas, ad hoc
groups formed. For example, across the bay in Oakland
, "Voice of the Unborn" was formed by a number of housewives. In Los Angeles
, a right-to-life organization was formed by a group of doctors’ wives. There was a network of such groups who brought information to their legislatures and to young people.
In addition, United for Life developed speakers bureaus: mostly sympathetic lawyers and housewives who went to every school in the Bay Area
to present the pro-life message. They purchased films which explored prenatal development. They asked to address every event in the Bay Area where their opposition would be.
United for Life organized the opposition to the bills in the California State Assembly
to strike down all the abortion laws, and they "defeated it handsomely."
Mary Ann Schwab and Alice Austurias, members of United for Life, organized the Catholic Office for Life in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and staffed it for many years. Some of the members of United for Life organized the Political Action organization in California as a separate organization because of the tax laws.
The Birthright organization was started in San Francisco by Dr. Filice's second-oldest daughter, Carol Brown. A similar organization with the same name had been started in Toronto, Ontario. Brown and her helpers contacted the Toronto office, and they joined with the international organization. This helped the spread of Birthright offices on the West Coast
.
Of Roe v. Wade
, Filice has stated: "A purely fabricated case went to the Supreme Court and Justice Blackmun, without shame, wrote a majority opinion that is a masterpiece of false logic. The Court struck down all the laws protecting the child. In doing so they threw our legal system into a shambles. To this day, the effects are felt in the grossly unjust decisions made by the courts to protect the capacity to kill the child in the womb".
Filice finds noteworthy that the pro-life effort was the first effort by Catholic lay people in the United States without the help of the clergy. It was an entirely lay movement. The first, in Filice's experience, in the United States where the people acted without the leadership of their pastors. This was important because the Catholic organizers wanted non-Catholics to join in. Their conviction was that abortion is a human problem and not just a religious one. The early pro-life activists felt that they, as citizens, had to educate the voters in the United States. As a result, many Catholic priests felt that it was not their fight. All that has changed by now, Fr. Filice points out: Priests for Life
grew out of United for Life.
in San Francisco.
Dr. and Mrs. Filice had six children: Linda Barbara Filice Williams (1948), Carol Barbara Filice Brown (1949), Michael Francis Filice (1952), Gael Barbara Filice Ayala (1953), Joseph Francis Filice (1955), and Marian Barbara Filice Previtali (1957). The Filice Family would settle on 24th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District, attending St. Monica's parish and school. Filice's daughters attended Presentation High School, while his sons attended St. Ignatius
, San Francisco's Jesuit high school.
In the early 1960s, Filice participated in one of the first cursillo retreats given in San Francisco, and he became a Third Order Carmelite. In 1964, he took his family on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. From the early 1960s to the middle 1970s, Filice was involved with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the pro-life movement.
Mrs. Filice died from complications related to kidney failure on February 11, 1976. Soon after, Dr. Filice retired from his professorship at the University of San Francisco and was accepted by Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken
as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. From 1977 to 1979, he was engaged in formation for the priesthood at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA. He was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ in August 1979 at St. Mary's Cathedral
in San Francisco. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop John R. Quinn
of San Francisco.
Filice served as a parochial vicar in various parishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco until the mid-1980s, when, with the permission of Archbishop Quinn, he established the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The impetus for the foundation of the Oratory was an awareness of the attacks on the family in the West, which had taken deep root in the culture. Fr. Filice sought to combat these evils by engaging in a sustained and organized apostolic service to the family in the context of the Oratorian life. In addition, he saw the common life of the Oratory as a healthy form of community life for secular priests engaged in pastoral ministry. The Oratory had pastoral care of the students of San Francisco State University
until 1991, when it transferred its operations to the parish of San Jose de la Mesa in Tijuana, Mexico. Fr. Filice served there until 1996, when Archbishop William Levada
called him home to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Fr. Filice was assigned to be chaplain of the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco. He served in that capacity until his retirement in the early 2000s.
Filice currently resides in San Francisco, where he is senior priest in residence at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the outer Richmond District. He serves as full-time chaplain to the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at 771 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. He is also part-time chaplain at the San Francisco County Jail, the Richmond Jail, and the San Bruno Jail, and at the Novitiate of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity
, at St. Paul's on Church Street in the Noe Valley neighborhood of the Mission District.
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the northern California region of the United States. It covers the City and County of San Francisco and the Counties of Marin and San Mateo...
. Filice is Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of San Francisco
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
(1947–1976), founder of United for Life of San Francisco (1968), co-founder of the St. Ignatius Institute
St. Ignatius Institute
The Saint Ignatius Institute is an undergraduate program at the University of San Francisco , a private university operated by the California Province of the Society of Jesus in San Francisco, California....
(1976), co-founder of Priests for Life
Priests for Life
Priests for Life is a Roman Catholic pro-life organization based in New York. It functions as a network to promote and coordinate pro-life activism with the primary strategic goal of ending abortion and euthanasia and to spread the Gospel of Life according to the encyclical of the same name...
(1991), and founder of the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
Ancestry
Filice's father, the elder Francis Filice, descended, on his father's side, from a tribe of shepherds in what is now the CalabriaCalabria
Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....
province of Southern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Filice theorizes that his father's family were Jews who took refuge in Southern Italy after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Filice's grandmothers were Rafaella Fortino and Nicolina Pascuzzi, both of whose families descended from the mountain peoples of Celtic descent in Southern Italy. These tribes descend from the Boii
Boii
The Boii were one of the most prominent ancient Celtic tribes of the later Iron Age, attested at various times in Cisalpine Gaul , Pannonia , in and around Bohemia, and Transalpine Gaul...
, a Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic people that specialized in cattle raising and filled up the Apennines in Roman times.
The name "Filice" is theorized to be either a form of the word for "fern" in the Southern Italian dialect (in which case, the accent should be on the first 'i') or a corruption of the Latin word for "happy", which is "felix". Both Filice and Joseph G. Fucilla, in his book Our Italian Surnames, support the latter theory.
The Filice Family, into which Fr. Filice would be born, went to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from Rogliano, a small town near Cosenza
Cosenza
Cosenza is a city in southern Italy, located at the confluence of two historic rivers: the Busento and the Crathis. The municipal population is of around 70,000; the urban area, however, counts over 260,000 inhabitants...
in Calabria. After spending some time in Washington State, they settled in Gilroy and Hollister, agriculturally-oriented cities south of San Francisco, near San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
. In Gilroy and Hollister, they owned various types of orchards.
Early life
Filice was born in Gilroy, CaliforniaGilroy, California
Gilroy is the southernmost city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 48,821 at the 2010 census. Gilroy is well-known for its garlic crop and for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, featuring various garlicky foods, including garlic ice cream. Gilroy also produces...
in August 1922. He was the firstborn son of Francis and Antoinette Filice. The elder Francis Filice died before his son's birth.
Filice grew up on Judah Street
N Judah
The N Judah is a Muni Metro line in San Francisco, California, so called as it runs along Judah Street for much of its length, named after railroad engineer Theodore Judah. It links downtown San Francisco to the Cole Valley and Sunset neighborhoods. It is the busiest line in the Muni Metro system...
in San Francisco's inner Sunset District, but he also spent much of his childhood with his cousins in Gilroy and Hollister. When he was a young boy, his widowed mother married Francis Garofalo, a barber in San Francisco. They had two children, Gabriel Garofalo, who died in infancy, and Gloria Garofalo Pizzinelli. Mrs. Pizzinelli inhabits the family home on Judah Street to this day and has three children of her own, as well as ten grandchildren.
Filice graduated from St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic School in 1935. He attended Polytechnic High School, and then the Christian Brothers' Sacred Heart High School
Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory
Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, commonly known as SH, SHC, or SHCP is a Catholic school located in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Founded in 1852, Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory is the oldest Catholic secondary school in San Francisco...
, where he distinguished himself academically.
Education
In 1939, Filice enrolled at the University of San Francisco - San Francisco's Jesuit university - where he took the Baccalaureate of Sciences in 1943. In 1945, he earned the Masters of Sciences at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. In 1949, he earned the Ph.D. at the same University of California, Berkeley. He published his doctoral dissertation Studies on the Cytology and Life History of a Giardia From the Laboratory Rat (Berkeley: University of California Press) in 1952.
Academic career
In 1947, Filice accepted a position as professor of biology at the University of San Francisco, where he would teach for almost 30 years.Among Filice's scholarly work in the field of parasitology
Parasitology
Parasitology is the study of parasites, their hosts, and the relationship between them. As a biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question, but by their way of life...
was a study based upon his doctoral research to characterize the life cycle of the medically significant parasite causing Giardiasis
Giardiasis
Giardiasis or beaver fever in humans is a diarrheal infection of the small intestine by a single-celled organism Giardia lamblia. Giardiasis occurs worldwide with a prevalence of 20–30% in developing countries. In the U.S., 20,000 cases are reported to the CDC annually, but the true annual...
.
- Filice F.P. 1952. Studies on the cytology and life history of a GiardiaGiardiaGiardia is a genus of anaerobic flagellated protozoan parasites of the phylum Metamonada in the supergroup "Excavata" that colonise and reproduce in the small intestines of several vertebrates, causing giardiasis, commonly known as Beaver fever...
from the laboratory rat. U.C. Publications in Zoology 57(2):53-146 University of California Press: Berkeley.
In the early 1950s, Filice and co-workers investigated levels of amino acids in the body tissues of various marine invertebrates including seastars, sea urchins and spoon worms. They were the first to demonstrate that various marine invertebrates maintain high concentrations of amino acids in their tissues in comparison to vertebrate animals.
- Giordano, M.F., H.A. Harper and F.P. Filice. 1950. The amino acids of the blood of Urechis caupo. Wasmann J. Biol. 8(1):1-7.
- Giordano, M.F., H.A. Harper and F.P. Filice. 1950. The amino acids of a starfish and a sea urchin (Asteroidea and Echinoidea). Wasmann J. Biol. 8(2):129-132.
Later in that decade, Filice embarked on a scientific expedition to Baja California, and he was a leader in the "Save The Bay" organization and movement in San Francisco, which sought to deter City planners from filling in the San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
in order to increase development of the Bay Area. In this respect, he published three significant studies in the field of marine ecology:
- Filice, F.P., 1954. An ecological study of the Castro Creek area of San Pablo Bay. Wasmann J. Biol. 12(1):1-24.
- Filice, F.P., 1958. Invertebrates from the estuarine portion of San Francisco Bay and some of the factors influencing their distribution. Wasmann J. Biol. 16:159-211.
- Filice, F.P., 1959. The effects of wastes on the distribution of bottom invertebrates in San Francisco Bay estuary. Wasmann J. Biol. 17:1-17.
Pro-life activism
Also central to his work as a professor of biology was the defense of unborn human life.Prior to the late 1960s, abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
was illegal in every state of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, except in cases where the pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
posed a risk to the mother's life. This changed in 1967 when Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
became the first state to legalize abortion in cases of rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, or when there was a threat of permanent disability to the pregnant women. During this period, when the topic of overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
first became widely discussed, Filice recalls that not a month would pass when he did not receive, as a biology professor at USF
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
, a free copy of a textbook which called into question population growth
Population growth
Population growth is the change in a population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals of any species in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....
. The first such book was The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich , in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth...
. Dr. Filice found the arguments made in such books unconvincing and began to speak against them at various meetings.
At this time, Filice was invited to participate in a panel discussing concerns over population at a local high school, by a former student of his who was teaching biology. In his observation, the speakers affiliated with Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America , commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The...
and the representative of the Human Population Institute of Stanford only talked about how to get an abortion, without addressing the population question at all. This concerned Filice, and, as a result, he called the chancery
Diocesan chancery
A diocesan chancery is the branch of administration which handles all written documents used in the official government of a Roman Catholic or Anglican diocese....
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to ask what they were doing to respond. Finding out that they did not have a plan for action, Filice asked if they minded if he tried something. The Chancellor of the Archdiocese told him to go ahead.
Filice had a student, John Martin, who had become a Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
, and, when Filice expressed his concern about how things were developing, this student told him that his pastor had expressed the same concerns. As a result, he invited his pastor to have lunch with Filice at USF. Pastor Kangas was pastor of the Finnish Lutheran Church of St. Francis on Church Street in San Francisco. Pastor Kangas was from Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and Filice found him to be a very spiritual man.
Filice also invited to the lunch meeting Eileen Ziomeck (now Dr. Aicardi, a pediatrician
Pediatrics
Pediatrics or paediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician or paediatrician...
in San Francisco), who, in Filice's words, was "smartest student I ever had". The four people who attended the luncheon decided to start an educational group aimed at countering the claims regarding population growth made in the media.
Pastor Kangas knew an Episcopalian
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
minister who was of the same mind. He was Rev. Charles Carroll, chaplain at UCSF
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
and pastor of the church that is now the Catholic chapel of St. John of God. Rev. Carroll had been a Catholic, at one time, but now served under the Episcopalian Bishop of San Francisco. His presence on the committee added a socially upscale quality to the movement.
So the four contacted Rev. Carroll and called a meeting. St. Mary’s Hospital let them use a meeting room. No doctors were at the meeting. Those in attendance at this first meeting were: Filice, Eileen Ziomeck, John Martin, John Galten, Clayton Barbeau (a Catholic author), Rev. Bernie Bush, S.J., Rev. Theodore Taheny, S.J., Rev. Carroll, Pastor Kangas, Bob Augros (a philosophy professor at USF), and others whom Filice cannot remember. He does remember that there were fourteen people present.
They decided that the political problem was impractical to address directly, and that what was needed was an educational group to counter the arguments of the pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
movement. Filice remembers going around the room and asking each if they wanted to be chairman, but each of them declined. So, by default, Filice became the chairman of this emergent pro-life
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
group in San Francisco. Thus was born United for Life of San Francisco.
United for Life met every two weeks for the next seven years. At their first official meeting, Dr. Raymond Dennehy came up from Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University is a private, not-for-profit, Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California, United States. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose...
, where he taught philosophy. Dr. Augros and he took the task of countering the arguments of their opposition, and they developed a pamphlet in question-and-answer form that became the source of arguments against abortion for all the pro-life groups in the United States. This pamphlet was the basis, later, of a book by Dr. Willkie from Ohio.
United for Life developed the first pro-life newsletter in the United States and contacted all the groups in California and the United States. In most densely-populated areas, ad hoc
Ad hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
groups formed. For example, across the bay in Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, "Voice of the Unborn" was formed by a number of housewives. In Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, a right-to-life organization was formed by a group of doctors’ wives. There was a network of such groups who brought information to their legislatures and to young people.
In addition, United for Life developed speakers bureaus: mostly sympathetic lawyers and housewives who went to every school in the Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
to present the pro-life message. They purchased films which explored prenatal development. They asked to address every event in the Bay Area where their opposition would be.
United for Life organized the opposition to the bills in the California State Assembly
California State Assembly
The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature. There are 80 members in the Assembly, representing an approximately equal number of constituents, with each district having a population of at least 420,000...
to strike down all the abortion laws, and they "defeated it handsomely."
Mary Ann Schwab and Alice Austurias, members of United for Life, organized the Catholic Office for Life in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and staffed it for many years. Some of the members of United for Life organized the Political Action organization in California as a separate organization because of the tax laws.
The Birthright organization was started in San Francisco by Dr. Filice's second-oldest daughter, Carol Brown. A similar organization with the same name had been started in Toronto, Ontario. Brown and her helpers contacted the Toronto office, and they joined with the international organization. This helped the spread of Birthright offices on the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
.
Of Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
, Filice has stated: "A purely fabricated case went to the Supreme Court and Justice Blackmun, without shame, wrote a majority opinion that is a masterpiece of false logic. The Court struck down all the laws protecting the child. In doing so they threw our legal system into a shambles. To this day, the effects are felt in the grossly unjust decisions made by the courts to protect the capacity to kill the child in the womb".
Filice finds noteworthy that the pro-life effort was the first effort by Catholic lay people in the United States without the help of the clergy. It was an entirely lay movement. The first, in Filice's experience, in the United States where the people acted without the leadership of their pastors. This was important because the Catholic organizers wanted non-Catholics to join in. Their conviction was that abortion is a human problem and not just a religious one. The early pro-life activists felt that they, as citizens, had to educate the voters in the United States. As a result, many Catholic priests felt that it was not their fight. All that has changed by now, Fr. Filice points out: Priests for Life
Priests for Life
Priests for Life is a Roman Catholic pro-life organization based in New York. It functions as a network to promote and coordinate pro-life activism with the primary strategic goal of ending abortion and euthanasia and to spread the Gospel of Life according to the encyclical of the same name...
grew out of United for Life.
Personal life
In 1947, Filice married Barbara Ann Fate, the daughter of Michael and Blanche Fate. Michael Fate was half Italian and half Irish and Blanche Fate was half Irish and half Swedish. Ms. Fate had earned a baccalaureate degree at Lone Mountain CollegeLone Mountain College
Lone Mountain College was a college acquired by the University of San Francisco in 1978. It was founded by the Religious of the Sacred Heart as Sacred Heart Academy in Menlo Park, California in 1898 and became College of the Sacred Heart in 1921...
in San Francisco.
Dr. and Mrs. Filice had six children: Linda Barbara Filice Williams (1948), Carol Barbara Filice Brown (1949), Michael Francis Filice (1952), Gael Barbara Filice Ayala (1953), Joseph Francis Filice (1955), and Marian Barbara Filice Previtali (1957). The Filice Family would settle on 24th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District, attending St. Monica's parish and school. Filice's daughters attended Presentation High School, while his sons attended St. Ignatius
St. Ignatius College Preparatory
St. Ignatius College Preparatory is a preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 1855. Located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, in the Sunset District of San Francisco, St. Ignatius is one of the oldest secondary schools in the U.S. state...
, San Francisco's Jesuit high school.
In the early 1960s, Filice participated in one of the first cursillo retreats given in San Francisco, and he became a Third Order Carmelite. In 1964, he took his family on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. From the early 1960s to the middle 1970s, Filice was involved with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the pro-life movement.
Mrs. Filice died from complications related to kidney failure on February 11, 1976. Soon after, Dr. Filice retired from his professorship at the University of San Francisco and was accepted by Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken
Joseph Thomas McGucken
Joseph Thomas McGucken was an American clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Sacramento and Archbishop of San Francisco .-Biography:...
as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. From 1977 to 1979, he was engaged in formation for the priesthood at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA. He was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ in August 1979 at St. Mary's Cathedral
Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, also known locally as Saint Mary's Cathedral, is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco in San Francisco, California...
in San Francisco. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop John R. Quinn
John R. Quinn
John Raphael Quinn is a Roman Catholic bishop, currently the Archbishop Emeritus of the Archdiocese of San Francisco; he served as the archdiocese's sixth archbishop from 1977 to 1995...
of San Francisco.
Filice served as a parochial vicar in various parishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco until the mid-1980s, when, with the permission of Archbishop Quinn, he established the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The impetus for the foundation of the Oratory was an awareness of the attacks on the family in the West, which had taken deep root in the culture. Fr. Filice sought to combat these evils by engaging in a sustained and organized apostolic service to the family in the context of the Oratorian life. In addition, he saw the common life of the Oratory as a healthy form of community life for secular priests engaged in pastoral ministry. The Oratory had pastoral care of the students of San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
until 1991, when it transferred its operations to the parish of San Jose de la Mesa in Tijuana, Mexico. Fr. Filice served there until 1996, when Archbishop William Levada
William Levada
William Joseph Levada is an American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Since 2005, he has served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, making him the highest ranking American in the Roman Curia. He was previously the Archbishop of Portland from 1986 to 1995 and...
called him home to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Fr. Filice was assigned to be chaplain of the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco. He served in that capacity until his retirement in the early 2000s.
Filice currently resides in San Francisco, where he is senior priest in residence at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the outer Richmond District. He serves as full-time chaplain to the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at 771 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. He is also part-time chaplain at the San Francisco County Jail, the Richmond Jail, and the San Bruno Jail, and at the Novitiate of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity
Missionaries of Charity
Missionaries of Charity is a Roman Catholic religious congregation established in 1950 by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which consists of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries...
, at St. Paul's on Church Street in the Noe Valley neighborhood of the Mission District.