A conversation with a young soldier bound for Iraq in May has
changed Pastor Federiqkoe DiBritto’s life.
The soldier came to DiBritto, who currently works for the David
Geffen School of Medicine, and expressed his fears of the
sacrifices he would have to make after his deployment.
They talked and prayed together, DiBritto says. Before leaving,
the soldier turned back to the pastor and begged him to take care
of his mother should something happen to him in Iraq. DiBritto said
he assured the 19-year-old high school graduate that nothing would
happen to him, but nevertheless, agreed to take care of his single
mother.
Those words haunted DiBritto, 50, as he presided over the
soldier’s funeral only two months later, when he died in
combat. The words haunt him to this day.
“So that’s now my responsibility; not only do I have
my 80-year-old parents to take care of, but I take care of (the
deceased soldier’s) mama,” said DiBritto, who has
recently been hired as the executive director of development and
patient relations for the division of digestive diseases at the
medical school.
He talks to the soldier’s mother once a week, sometimes
twice, to make sure she’s doing OK, he says.
She is one of 3,000 on a list DiBritto keeps of people he
reaches out to on a daily basis. Four weeks ago, this list began to
include names in the UCLA community.
A veteran of the Marine Corps who helped relocate Vietnamese
refugees, a former CEO of the Latin American chapter of the
non-profit organization Catholic Charities in Mexico and a
recipient of the International Humanitarian Award by the
International Association of Philanthropists in 2002, DiBritto
hopes to bring his charitable touch to the UCLA campus.
DiBritto, a Catholic pastor for over two decades, came to UCLA a
month ago with a mission slightly different from those he has seen
as a man of religion.
DiBritto is faced with the daunting task of raising $50 million
over the next five years for a new research center his department
plans to build, the International Center for Digestive Diseases.
The center will house research for cures of intestinal disorders,
among other diseases.
The center will be run under the leadership of Dr. Gary Gitnick,
the chairman of the division for the past 11 years, whose dream was
to establish the center on the UCLA campus, DiBritto said.
This is the first time that the pastor, who is not yet ready to
become an ordained priest by personal choice, has entered the
medical field.
And at a time when the Christian faith has gone from the privacy
of practitioners’ homes to the center of the political arena,
DiBritto says he is able to separate his faith from his public life
and is not afraid to speak out against tradition or corruption in
his church.
“If I were to be a Catholic priest, I would be a rebel
priest,” DiBritto said, explaining that he supports abortion
under certain circumstances, is a strong advocate for stem cell
research and believes same-sex couples should receive the same
rights straight married couples do.
Though it’s contrary to traditional Christian teachings,
DiBritto believes gay people should have the right “to find
peace and happiness.”
“Judgment only continues to get us in trouble … and my
church needs to change,” he said, adding that though he will
not be promoting gay rights, he will be advocating for peace and
happiness wherever it is necessary.
For 12 weeks before the presidential election, DiBritto had been
an adamant campaigner for Sen. John Kerry, going on bus tours,
canvassing in swing states and strategizing in his local
precincts.
After hearing the results of the election, DiBritto said he was
shocked and dismayed like the majority of people who voted for
Kerry and predicted his victory.
Still, he is motivated now more than ever to continue the
charitable work he has been doing his entire life. He owes it to
the young soldiers dying in Iraq, he said.
DiBritto is a self-described “defender of the
people” and has a goal each day of reaching out to at least
one person and helping them.
Whether it is a homeless person standing in front of the
Citibank building in Westwood, the family of a dead patient at the
medical center or just someone in the elevator, DiBritto says his
work never ends.
“We need to take care of those people. Then we are doing
justice to the troops in Iraq,” he said.
For the time being, DiBritto has become engrossed in comforting
the parents of adolescents in prison.
“He’s a household name in my home,” says Lupe
Mendez-Rosales, a San Bernardino county resident who was comforted
by DiBritto’s counseling when her teenage grandson had been
detained.
The parents of Cameron Saul, 24, a former college student who is
now serving a three-year sentence for burglary, also say the
pastor’s impact in their lives has been invaluable.
“We were concerned once our son has paid his debt to
society, how does a person rebuild their life, how do they get a
job?” said Saul’s mother, Sherry Saul. In her quest for
answers after her son was imprisoned as a result of a drug
addiction in 2003, she ran across DiBritto’s name on a Web
log.
“God meant for us to be friends. Now the friendship has
developed to the point that we talk several times a week,”
Sherry said, adding that DiBritto has helped answer many of the
questions she had as “a prison mom.”
Though he has prestige in the community, among scholars and
around the world, DiBritto says he hasn’t forgotten his
humble beginnings.
DiBritto grew up on a chicken-coop-turned-house in a small
community near Glendale. His family was not rich, he said, and his
parents worked three jobs to support the family. Sometimes he wore
patched and torn clothing to school.
Leaving his job with the non-profit organization in Mexico,
DiBritto returned home to care for his ailing parents. Both have
Alzheimer’s disease; his mother has had kidney failure and is
on dialysis.
Still, DiBritto says it is the love his parents instilled in him
and their determination to survive that gets him “jazzed
about life.”
On Friday morning, DiBritto didn’t know exactly whose life
he would help that day, but he was sure he would find that person
by the day’s end.
“I can’t tell you who I am going to meet today. I
haven’t met that person, but I can tell you that today
““ that person that I meet ““ not only will I help that
person find his way, but I think that it’s the connection
that I make with these people,” DiBritto said.
“I can give you help today, but “˜What can I do
tomorrow?’ is the question I ask,” he said.