The Deacon's Bench
His tenure was exceptionally short—less than a year.
Roman Catholic Bishop Cirilo Flores died Saturday after a battle with cancer, the Diocese of San Diego announced.
Flores, 66, died at 2:47 p.m., at the Nazareth House senior living facility in Mission Valley where he had been transferred this week from a hospital in Los Angeles.
Flores “passed away peacefully,” with his cousin Dr. Tom Martinez, Msgr. Steven Callahan and the Sisters of Nazareth at his bedside, the diocese said.
Please remember Bishop Flores and his family in your prayers,” the diocese added.
On Wednesday, the diocese had announced Flores was suffering from cancer that was “widespread, very advanced and very aggressive” and that doctors determined he was not a candidate for chemotherapy because of “his very weak condition and the advanced stage of the disease.”
A week earlier, the diocese had announced that Flores, who suffered a stroke in April, was being treated for prostate cancer at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.
Flores was taken to Nazareth House, which is owned and operated by the Sisters of Nazareth, a Catholic religious order.
A native of Corona, he received a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University and a law degree from Stanford. His father was an immigrant from Sinaloa, Mexico.
Flores practiced business-litigation law for a decade in Riverside and Los Angeles counties before being ordained in 1991 as a priest in the Diocese of Orange.
Read his official biography here, which notes about his episcopal motto:
For his motto Bishop Flores selected the phrase “For the Greater Glory of God.” These words express that for a Christian, and especially for a cleric in God’s Holy Church, all that is done is to be done for the greater glory of God. This phrase is also the motto which St. lgnatius of Loyola chose for the Society of Jesus, the religious order he founded, and the religious order by whom Bishop Flores was educated at Loyola University of Los Angeles (now Loyola Marymount University).
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him…
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