A Lady Beloved by Many

At precisely 7 a.m. the baritone bells dong-dong-donged through downtown Los Angeles, just as a fountain jumped to life and a guard unlocked the Temple Street gate of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic cathedral. Cecelia Karikitan stood there waiting.

“I come from Pasadena every Sunday,” said the 62-year-old retired cosmetologist, her smile highlighted by red lipstick. “I am devoted to the Virgin Mary, and this is my solemn place.”

Formally, it’s the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, a $200-million, 12-story, freeway-adjacent, concrete-wall and alabaster-window monument to modern worship.

It was built during the clergy sexual abuse scandal and derided by critics as the “Taj Mahony” for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who commissioned it and opened its doors to worldwide architectural analysis on a scorching hot day, Sept. 2, 2002.

And not yet four years later, it is Karikitan’s solemn place. It’s also 27-year-old Christian Gonzalez’s new parish, where he has chosen to be married next winter. It’s where Robert Rogers, 75, feels as if he “is lifted off the ground” every time he walks through Cathedral Square, the plaza that reminds Carlos Lopez, 39, of “my hometown,” Guadalajara, Mexico.

It’s apparent that this place enriches the spiritual lives of thousands of Los Angeles Catholics. On this one day in the life of a cathedral built to last five centuries, about 12,000 people would attend four Palm Sunday Masses. Even more are expected to pack Easter services today.

Behind its imposing adobe-colored walls, the cathedral is all at once a tourist destination, a park packed with families, a busy cafeteria and a retail store that can’t keep in stock enough bottles of Our Lady of the Angels Merlot.

But it is also a working church.

“I don’t see this as a cathedral, I see it as my church,” said Susan Sauvagea, 44, a Monrovia elementary school teacher who will soon receive the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation. “As big as it is, it gets smaller when you know it. It’s actually a very homey, down-to-earth place.”

It’s where at 7:30 a.m. Luciana Pineda, 75, sat in solitude in the sanctuary. Hunched against a chair, her mitten-covered fingers rolled through rosary beads as her lips moved in silent Hail Marys. She lives in a downtown apartment and worked as a maid all her life.

“As long as I can still walk,” she said, “I will come here and pray.”

*

Before each Mass, Lolly Aquino of Highland Park presides over a corps of 200 volunteer ushers and Eucharistic ministers who distribute Communion. All must sign in at a folding table set up in a vesting room, part of the cathedral’s blessed back stage.

Three cathedral staffers -- Gabriela Esparza Reitzell; her assistant, Jim Devlin; and Sister Maria Corazon -- keep the Masses running: ensuring that the Book of Gospels is turned to the right reading for the priest, checking the wireless headset microphones for the priest and lectors, making sure the vestments are in perfect order. Most Sundays, about 8,000 people attend three Masses.

The trio scans the crowd and estimates how many Communion wafers and bottles of wine will be consecrated (eight bottles for a crowded Mass).

Aquino assigns every Eucharistic minister a number. Hand-printed stickers on the sanctuary’s limestone floor mark their spots.

When distributing Holy Communion to about 3,000, traffic flow is important -- it must be fast and orderly, but reverent. Ushers direct people to the ministers holding the fullest cups of wine and plates of wafers. The Communion procession at the 12:30 p.m. Palm Sunday Mass, the day’s most crowded, clocked in at eight minutes.

Charles Lane, the cathedral cantor, has a unique perspective on a day’s services. His job is to look directly into the eyes of the people and invite them to join him in song.

“I really see the face of L.A. I see every kind of people. I see very wealthy people, very poor people, I see all races,” Lane said. “This place grows on you, and it’s growing in meaning to Los Angeles.”

*

Perhaps the cathedral’s Spanish architect, Jose Rafael Moneo, didn’t anticipate how hard it is to light charcoal briquettes to fuel a pot of incense. Just try it inside the cathedral and the fire alarm goes off.

On this day, an usher assigned to briquette duty stood outside with a box full of butane lighters, a metal spoon and the censer, the ornate metal container in which incense is burned. Like a backyard barbecue chef, he blew, and he poked the coals until they were burning hot.

Then there’s the matter of the incense itself.

It’s the cardinal’s own special blend of up to seven fragrances that he mixes every month. Inside the cathedral, it’s the smoke that matters, the symbol of prayers rising to heaven. To achieve a visibly thick and ascending plume, Mahony favors rock incense, which looks like aquarium pebbles, over powdery brands that burn too quickly.

*

Anticipating the Palm Sunday crowds, Isaura Villegas, 60, coaxed her 10-member family to leave their home in Corona at 6 a.m. to make it in time for the 8 a.m. Mass, their first visit to the cathedral.

“This is the most sacred place I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Villegas said.

After Mass, the family gathered around the 6-ton, 10-foot-long marble altar and posed and smiled for snapshots.

That’s the thing about the cathedral: People are not intimidated to walk into the sanctuary and gently touch the altar.

After one Mass, 15-year-old Elena Mercado walked around the giant cathedral, including the cardinal’s ornate chair that symbolizes his pastoral leadership and teaching authority. The teenager couldn’t resist. She sat down on it.

“It just got my curiosity. I wanted to try it,” she said. Then she looked out into the nave. “You can see everything from this chair! It’s got the best view of the building.”

Some visitors found a way to make this holy place accommodate an unanticipated cathedral-going need: stroller parking. During the 12:30 Mass, nine strollers were crammed into one chapel decorated with a portrait of Pope John Paul II and the chair and kneeler he used during his 1987 Los Angeles visit.

The Saphire family, on vacation from New Jersey, took in a Mass on Sunday, and planned a tour of Warner Bros. for Monday. But Kathy Saphire, 47, guessed the cathedral would leave the lasting memory. “We’ve been to St. Peter’s, we’ve been to St. Patrick’s,” she said, “and never have I had the feeling of warmth that I had in this church.”

*

Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik, cathedral pastor, witnessed the birth of a tradition after the first public Mass on Sept. 3, 2002.

“This elderly woman, she had to be in her 80s, looked up at the cross and said, ‘My Jesus!’ ” he recalled. She walked up to the life-size bronze crucifix behind the altar, kissed the feet of Jesus and “everyone flowed out of the pews and did the same.”

Now, after every Mass, scores of people line up in the center aisle to venerate the 6-foot-6 form of the crucified Christ.

Grace Chan, 40, from Hong Kong, stood in line last Sunday weeping. When she reached the cross, she leaned her bowed head into Jesus’ shins and sobbed.

Later, Chan explained what she had prayed for:

“I just asked Jesus to forgive me.... I complain too much, I need patience.... I asked for more strength.”

Sara Carrasco kissed the bronze feet nailed to the cross and looked up into Jesus’ face. “That cross makes me feel so close to him. I feel his power, I feel my faith.”

Some worshipers reach as high as they can and caress his knees. The human touch has already given a shiny patina to his legs and feet.

*

By 4:10 p.m. the last person had left the sanctuary and the volunteers had checked out. Janitor Manuel Quintanilla dry-mopped the sanctuary floor.

Sister Maria Corazon put away the last of the cups. Head usher Ruben Garcia teased her, calling the petite nun in a black veil “Super Sacristan.” She giggled and punched him in the arm. Devlin took one more peek into the nave. Three people sat alone in the pews, far from each other, where they could stay until sundown when security closes the cathedral.

Devlin punched in a code, locking the doors to the sacristy. And then he flicked off all but a few of the lights in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.