By Doug Irving
Orange County Register
July 9, 2010
http://www.ocregister.com/news/cathedral-256900-diocese-orange.html
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| Bishop Tod Brown blesses the congregation with holy water at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange in this file photo. |
The Diocese of Orange has hired an international architect to design a cathedral for its 1.2 million Catholics on land in south Santa Ana once known as Gospel Swamp.
The diocese has made little progress on the cathedral project since 2002, when Bishop Tod D. Brown blessed the site with holy water. The selection of an architect represents "the first of many steps" toward building the first Roman Catholic Cathedral in Orange County, Brown said in a prepared statement.
The architect, Craig W. Hartman, works for the San Francisco office of an international architecture firm called Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. His past projects have included the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and Christ the Light Cathedral in Oakland.
An anonymous donor is covering the cost of the cathedral's design phase, diocese spokesman Ryan Lilyengren said. He did not know how much that phase will cost, but said it will likely take several months.
He also said it's too early to say how much the cathedral itself will cost. Documents filed several years ago with the city describe a central church with 2,650 seats and side buildings for daycare, a preschool and meeting rooms, Lilyengren said.
It will be built to be energy efficient and to reflect the diversity of the diocese itself, Lilyengren said.
The "Christ Our Savior" Cathedral complex would take up 15 acres near the corner of Bear Street and West MacArthur Boulevard, near Santa Ana's border with Costa Mesa. The site, a former lima bean field, used to be called Gospel Swamp because of the evangelical activity in the area.
When Brown blessed the site in 2002, the diocese was hoping to raise $75 million to pay for the cathedral and other projects. But fundraising was already on hold, in part because of what Brown described then as the "serious challenge" of the national priest sexual-abuse scandal.
The Diocese of Orange agreed in 2005 to a record $100 million settlement with 90 alleged victims of sexual abuse.
The diocese has used Holy Family parish and church in Orange as a stand-in cathedral ever since it broke from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1976. The cathedral planned in Santa Ana would be the first true diocesan cathedral in the Orange diocese.
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