THE SUNDAY PROFILE : Tower of Hope : Crippled and Decaying, the Cathedral of St. Vibiana Clings to Life With a Faithful Flock

The bell tower is wrapped in plastic, like a homeless person dressed for rain. Plaster peels off the outside walls, exposing the old bricks. The building is condemned, its coffin nails pounded down by the earthquake of 1994. Yet, 100 faithful parishioners still call it their spiritual home.

The Cathedral of St. Vibiana, mother church for the 3.5 million Catholics in the region, was meant for better things. From the day in 1859 when Bishop Thaddeus Amat set up residence in Los Angeles to oversee all of central California from here, he envisioned the growing pueblo as an ecclesiastical center. At its heart, he planned a jewel-like cathedral.

Seventeen years later, the building was dedicated to the obscure St. Vibiana. Little was known about her, except that she had been martyred for her faith in 3rd century Rome. The years since her honorable introduction to Los Angeles have proved she has the patience of a saint. Nearly stripped of her title, abandoned and demolished more than once, Vibiana has been determined that she shall not be moved.

Now, the tenacious woman finds herself at the mercy of the authorities once again. The city’s most powerful clergymen, politicians, lawyers, contractors and architects are wrestling over her fate.

“At the moment, it is not a beautiful place,” says Msgr. Terrence Fleming, cathedral administrator and chancellor of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

It should be, and will be, he expects.

“To me, a cathedral needs to be a downtown center where people can come together to pray if there is a war or national tragedy. They might come for the Christmas and Easter Masses that are wonderful. When it is a grand cathedral, it will be awe-inspiring.”

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, spiritual leader of this largest Catholic archdiocese in the world, has secured the financial backing for a brand-new building. At the same time, the Los Angeles Conservancy proposes that the existing structure be saved, seismically reinforced and incorporated into the revised cathedral complex.

A cathedral by definition is meant to be a showpiece. It is the home of the archbishop, who presides over a large geographic area, not just his own parish church. Deacons, priests and bishops are ordained there. Popes and presidents visit. State funerals are held, so are the weddings of the prominent.

Yet, most Catholics would be hard pressed to offer an informed opinion about how to plan Vibiana’s future. They have never set foot inside. If they had, they might be distressed by her sorry state. She looks more like an old shoe than a showpiece. It’s true that most downtown cathedrals had their heyday in the first half of the century, before suburban flight, but few have fallen deeper into the doldrums than Vibiana.

Parishioners’ opinions about her future mirror the high-level debate. “It’s a waste of $45 million to build a new cathedral,” says Martin Larson, a photographer who first came to St. Vibiana 10 years ago. “Restore the building, reopen the school and get gang members in there to teach them something besides how to use a gun.”

Alice Seispo, a parishioner of 33 years, couldn’t agree less. “The cathedral is the center of the archdiocese,” she insists. “It should be big and beautiful, so everyone can come.”

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Vibiana is no stranger to conflict concerning her proper place in the world.

In 1868, Ozro Childs, a prominent developer, donated land on Main Street, just north of 6th. His gift inspired plans for a Spanish baroque-style cathedral, modeled on San Miguel del Mar in Barcelona. “Interestingly, Childs was a Protestant, married to a fervent Catholic,” says Michael Engh, a Jesuit priest who teaches history at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.

Pope Pius IX gave instructions to name the cathedral after the long-forgotten martyr--he needed to find her a final resting place. Her body had been buried in a Roman catacomb until an earthquake there rattled her bones in the mid-1800s. It is tradition that a cathedral embrace the relics of a saint, and so Vibiana’s venerable remains were shipped to Los Angeles. Her coffin is enclosed in the abandoned church building.

But even before groundbreaking on Childs’ property, plans were shelved. The site was rejected as a poor choice, too far outside town.

Amiel Cavallier, another early patron of the city, had also donated land. His was the gift that became the cathedral’s home. Ezra Kysor, the first Angeleno to make his living here as an architect, designed the building. The property spans the downtown block bordered by Main Street to the east and Los Angeles Street to the west, between 2nd and 3rd streets.

It took the city 13 years to approve the project, and it was another four years before the cathedral was complete. After the dedication ceremony of 1876, there were glowing newspaper accounts praising the overall grandeur and the beauty of the bell tower. The estimated cost was $80,000. Not 20 years later, the restless spirit that has agitated Vibiana from the start moved for change. The interior of the new building was remodeled with Mexican onyx and Carrara marble was added. Frosted globes were installed in the sanctuary and a stained glass window with the image of a dove was placed in the dome.

Then in 1907, Bishop Thomas Conaty decided to relocate his congregation to 9th Street. He would build a bigger, better church and change the name as well. Vibiana seemed doomed to sink back into obscurity.

“Bishop Conaty wanted a more suitable site and a magnificent cathedral,” explains Msgr. Francis Weber, archivist for the Archdiocese.

Conaty’s San Francisco counterpart, Bishop Patrick Riordan, was against the idea from the start. Too big and too expensive, he complained. Still, plans for Vibiana’s destruction went ahead. This time there was no earthquake to save her. There was, however, a recession. The project was halted for lack of money.

Fifteen years later, in 1922, the ancient saint’s bones got rattled again--not to mention her nerves. The new bishop, John Cantwell, proposed a mega-cathedral on Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park.

While he was figuring out how to pay for it, he ordered a face lift for Vibiana. The new facade was inspired by Roman design and better suited her Italian heritage. The operation was completed in 1924. This is the same face Vibiana wears today.

It took until 1943 for the financial winds to turn in Cantwell’s favor. By then, however, he was elderly and in ill health. Once again, the building project fizzled.

By the 1940s, a school had been added to the property. “The ‘30s and ‘40s were glory days,” Weber says. “The school was flourishing, and that always attracts people. And downtown was a vibrant place, until after World War II.”

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The school closed in the mid-’60s, when the parish could no longer support it. Now, the basement is used for Mass on Sundays and daily at noon. The top floor is a convent for a community of seven nuns, the Disciples of the Divine Master. They use several of the empty classrooms as work spaces, where they make vestments for clergy. They sell them in the religious gift shop in the school building.

At this time of year, it bustles. Classrooms are crowded with stuffed animals, new clothing, and the latest children’s toys donated by movie companies, investment banking firms, chain stores and construction companies, as well as individuals. Part of a holiday project called “Adopt a Family,” the goods are delivered to the residents of the neighboring welfare hotels before Christmas.

“You cry when you see how the people live,” says Delores Soza, director of the parish Sunday school. “I asked the mother of five young children what sizes they wear. She didn’t know. She has never bought them any clothes.”

The abandoned cathedral appears like a dark shadow shrinking back from Main Street, as if to avoid attention. The surrounding office buildings and stores are crumbling. Next door is the open grave site of the Union Rescue Mission, torn down in the spring. Years of homeless people napping in the cathedral doorways, setting fires on the cold sidewalk at night, camping in cardboard boxes that leaned against the church, left a residue on Vibiana’s gray face.

“We prayed that the mission would move,” admits Sister Antoinette, the energetic nun who directs a prayer group for senior citizens that meets every afternoon in the tiny chapel contained by the school. “Our first intention was that the church should be resplendent.”

They have a way to go before that dream comes true. In the meantime, the facade of the church has been scrubbed clean. Two maintenance men tend to the school building and its small chapel, as well as the rectory where five priests live. The 1,200-seat cathedral was locked shut in May. The school hallways sparkle, but cracks in the walls and the need for paint add to the ghostly air.

Not only her indeterminate future but limited finances have deterred Vibiana’s upkeep. The core congregation donates about $750 per week. The downtown office workers who pad the parish numbers contribute an additional $400. Actual maintenance costs are three to four times that amount. A recent archdiocesan report projected a $20-million tab for the seismic overhaul that would make the cathedral safe. Most of that money would go to foundational work.

In the meantime, Cardinal Mahony has been pledged $45 million in gifts ($25 million from the Dan Murphy Foundation, funded by oil and cement businesses; $10 million from the Dorothy Leavey Foundation, formed by founders of State Farm Insurance; and $10 million pledged by Catholic families). On one condition: The money must be put into a new building. The Cardinal sees the project as part of the overall revitalization of downtown.

The conservancy group favors saving the old structure and incorporating it into any plan for a new cathedral compound. A workshop is planned for January, where the two sides will discuss their positions. Meanwhile, developer Ira Yellin, project manager for the new complex, has invited 50 architects from around the world to submit proposals and building plans.

Through it all, the cardinal continues to live at St. Vibiana. Some parishioners would be surprised to hear this. “The Cardinal seems nice, friendly, but I have never seen him,” says one native of Columbia who has come to the cathedral for 25 years. “I don’t know where he lives.”

“I think most people are aware he is here, but they aren’t here because of him,” says Sister Mary Peter, the nuns’ sister in charge. “The people who come are looking for something else. They ask me and my sisters, ‘Can you simply listen to us?’ They want to tell us they need support and prayers because of illness, accidents, problems. Just listening can be so powerful.”

Mahony travels often, but he still presides over solemn feast days celebrated at the cathedral. At 5:30 on the foggy morning of Dec. 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he stood in the church parking lot near the entrance to the basement worship space, greeting people who came for the procession and Mass. His vestments were covered by the embroidered image of Mary, the mother of God, as she appeared to the Indian peasant Juan Diego near Mexico City in 1531.

If Vibiana’s cathedral status, and her distinguished resident, haven’t attracted parishioners lately, both have drawn a stellar list of visitors from their earliest years. President Clinton attended Sunday service before the building was closed. Pope John Paul II slept at St. Vibiana’s during his 1987 Los Angeles visit. Mother Frances Cabrini, the Italian matron who founded a religious order for women, celebrated her silver jubilee at the cathedral in 1905.

In 1901, Stephen Mallory White, the first U.S. senator from California, was buried from the cathedral. Six years earlier, so was Richard Sommerset Den, the first medical doctor to establish a practice in Los Angeles.

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Hard as it seems to imagine the decrepit Vibiana in her glory, those who love her say she is beautiful despite her appearance. “It’s my church. I’ve been coming for 35 years,” says Hannah Mary O’Sullivan, a nurse who takes the bus from the mid-Wilshire district to attend daily Mass at noon.

She could belong to a parish in her own, more affluent neighborhood. But she feels at home here. “The poor are always with us, and we’re all at the same level before God,” she says. “I think we should all be together in church.”

Jesusita Valdez joined the parish in 1953. Now she attends the senior citizens’ prayer group that Sister Antoinette leads. “The church gives us strength, and I like to pray with the sisters,” she says.

During a break, the nuns serve hot soup and mini-muffins. This social side of the gathering flows into prayer time too. A dozen or so white-haired women, canes and walkers parked in the aisles of the chapel, pass prayer books, help one another stand and kneel. They wave goodbye to whoever leaves early, barely lifting their heads from their readings.

“We pray for everybody, not just ourselves,” says Angelina Soldatenko, who has been part of the group for more than five years.

The chapel holds about 50 people. Almost that many crowd in for daily Mass at 7 a.m. The parking lot reflects the diverse group. A rickety van pulls up beside a new Mercedes. Eight garment district workers pile out of one, a silver-haired judge ascends from the other.

John O’Keefe often attended morning Mass during the years he worked as a downtown stockbroker. Last fall he changed careers to become director of fund-raising for his alma mater, Loyola University in Chicago. From his new Westside office, he thinks back. “I liked it there,” he says. “I thought it was nice that there are people off the street, the nuns and downtown workers together. It’s the chance to give the kiss of peace to all sorts of people.”

John Welborne, a lawyer with an office downtown, was married in the church last year. “Despite the guests preconceptions about the neighborhood, the cathedral was a wonderful place to be married,” he says. “We had a large wedding, and it is a beautiful place. Ninety percent of the people I invited had never been in it.”

The homeless are a part of most services. Some attend Mass every day. For months, one frail woman wore nothing but a cocoon-like blanket. One now carries her possessions in a backpack and continuously paces the side aisles.

Fearless Sister Antoinette, hardly 5 feet tall, traffics the difficult cases. “One morning a man wearing only torn shorts was screaming,” she says. “He wanted to get into the church.” She rushed to the door, opened it and called to him. “I said, ‘Sir, you are not dressed for Mass today. You are welcome to come back another day, when you are properly dressed.’ ” She was sure he was about to hit her. “I told him, ‘God loves you. And I love you.’ ” He asked her to say that again, then he left. She hasn’t seen him since.

Historians tell us one side of the story of St. Vibiana. “What happened here is, in the 30 years after the cathedral was built, the city rapidly outgrew it,” Loyola Marymount’s Engh says. “No one dreamed Los Angeles would skyrocket and sprawl. St. Vibiana became a downtown church in a drastically altered neighborhood. After 1900, two bishops wanted to move it. Now, Cardinal Mahony is saying, let’s recognize our historic roots.”

After one recent noon Mass in the school basement, Msgr. Fleming told his parishioners their side of the story: “The church is not a building. The people are the church.”