The Rev. Canon Richard Estrada, who worked with César Chávez as a Roman Catholic priest and helped the poor throughout his ordained ministry, died March 31 at 83.
He was a native of Los Angeles, ordained as a priest of the Claretian Missionaries in 1995, and completed a master’s degree from the Graduate Theological Union. He was received as a priest of the Episcopal Church in 2015.
Estrada—well known during the sanctuary movement of the 1980s and ’90s—was founder and board president of Jovenes Inc., established in 1989 as the first shelter for unhoused immigrant youth in Los Angeles. Jovenes now provides housing for more than 700 youth and college students each year across Los Angeles County.
“His legacy will blossom forever in thousands of lives he has touched and probably saved,” said Bishop John Harvey Taylor of Los Angeles. “When I saw him two weeks ago at PIC Good Samaritan Hospital, his bed was ringed by colleagues from Jovenes, the still-thriving organization for at-risk young people that he launched 35 years ago, as our region absorbed tens of thousands of refugees from war-ravaged Central America.”
Most recently at Epiphany Church in Los Angeles, Estrada collaborated with Taylor and the Rev. John Watson, priest in charge, in founding the Lydia Lopez Center for Community Empowerment. The center, launched in 2024, offers immigrants supportive services, education, and cultural events. The center is named in honor of the late Canon Lydia Lopez, Estrada’s longtime friend and colleague in justice work, who died in 2023.
The Rev. Dr. John Furman Wall Jr., who served in the U.S. Army for 32 years before his ordination, died March 28 at 93. He was a native of Boise, Idaho, and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Princeton University, George Washington University, and Virginia Theological Seminary. He earned a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering.
He was ordained deacon in 1994 and priest in 1995 and served as vicar or priest in charge of several parishes in Illinois and Virginia. In his later years he attended Church of the Apostles, an Anglican parish in Columbia, South Carolina.
During his years in the Army, he served in Germany, Vietnam, and South Korea. From 1980 to1982, he led the construction of two airbases in the Negev Desert as part of the Camp David Peace Accords. His final Army assignment was as the first commander of the Strategic Defense Command.
He is survived by Suzanne, his wife of 68 years, three sons, 11 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.
The Very Rev. Sandra Antoinette (Sandye) Wilson, a priest and social activist across more than 40 years, died April 15, about a month after disclosing that she had Stage 3 serous endometrial cancer. She was 71.
Wilson was dean of the Cathedral of All Saints in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands for the last five years of her life.
A native of Baltimore, she was a graduate of Vassar College, Union Theological Seminary, Graduate Theological Foundation, and Fordham University. Ordained deacon in 1980 and priest in 1981, she served congregations in the dioceses of Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Newark, and New Jersey.
She was a member of the Church Pension Fund’s board of trustees, and served for a time as chief operating officer of Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Union of Black Episcopalians, which she served as president (1998-2001), called Wilson “a UBE pioneer.”
“If you Google ‘force of nature,’ Sandye Wilson’s photo would rise to the top,” said the Rev. Susan Russell, canon for engagement across difference in the Diocese of Los Angeles.
On April 4, Wilson thanked supporters for their prayers as she finished her first round of chemotherapy: “I hope it will inspire any others who are experiencing cancer to be as unafraid as possible as we hold onto God’s unchanging hand. May God bless us all.”
Other Deaths
The Rev. Alberto P. Alarcon, April 14
The Rev. James R. Cullipher III, March 13
The Rev. Christine Marie, March 2
Sister Abigail Zaccari, SHN, April 1
Douglas LeBlanc is the Associate Editor for Book Reviews and writes about Christianity and culture. He and his wife, Monica, attend St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Henrico, Virginia.
