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3 years after fire nearly destroyed it, Mission San Gabriel is ready to reopen

June 24, 2023

Three years after Mission San Gabriel was nearly destroyed by fire, the more than 250-year-old church is set to reopen on July 1, capping a multimillion-dollar drive to restore the landmark after months of delays and introduce a long-in-the-works effort to “re-imagine” the narrative of its impact on Indigenous people.

“It is a very exciting moment … a very exciting time. It is finally coming to completion,” said Rev. Parker Sandoval, vice chancellor and senior director of ministerial services for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, who was part of the planning process of reopening the historic chapel and the accompanying museum at the site.

It was July 10, 2020, when a fire that began in the adobe and wood building’s choir loft consumed the roof of the mission — Mission San Gabriel Arcángel — and seriously damaged its interior.

Scores of firefighting teams — more than 85 firefighters and 12 engine companies from through the west San Gabriel Valley — doused the blaze. But by then there was major damage not just to the roof but to the interior, including its pulpit and altar.

Fallen debris from the roof and ceiling, and firefighters’ heavy equipment, caused severe cracks in the floor tiles.

A few items were saved, including its bell and some historical relics, which were in storage because of some previous renovations at the time.

The church was founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1771 and is widely known as the birthplace of Christianity in Los Angeles.

The home to L.A.’s first generation of Roman Catholics was now a shell of itself. Its roof was destroyed, its relics and religious artifacts threatened or gone.

And a stunned church community, and the city of San Gabriel where the landmark resides, faced a long journey of restoration ahead.

In December, the man accused of setting the fire, John David Corey, was ordered to stand trial. The case is pending.

The roof of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel on Sunday, July 12, 2020, following a fire that damaged the Mission’s church. The Mass was held in the Mission’s Chapel of the Annunciation. on Sunday, July 12. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

‘We are going to rebuild’

Mission San Gabriel itself is a relatively small church that sits on what over the decades has become a larger campus, complete with another, more modern church and a school. The campus is often called the Mission, but technically, the Mission is the old church. And that’s what was burned.

Two days after the fire started, the chapel’s charred and partially collapsed roof in the backdrop, Archbishop Jose Gomez told a crowd of faithful on a Sunday morning that “we are going to rebuild.”

“It’s time for committing ourselves to a new beginning,” he said.

And that they did, leading to the coming July 1 opening, when the entire Mission will fully open for the first time since before the pandemic.

The inside of the church after a fire tore through the church at Mission San Gabriel destroying the inside of the 245-year-old building in San Gabriel on Saturday, July 11, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/ SCNG)

Sandoval said on Friday that after extensive work, and a series of delays — repairing, and in effect, replacing the roof being the largest undertaking — the main part of the restoration is complete. In an effort that required teams of specialists, from laborers to historians, windows were replaced, stucco was restored, there was major work on the pulpit, the altar ceiling, three major chandeliers, the choir loft and its Wurlitzer. In a final phase the altar was restored.

“It was an amazing feat to see unfold,” Sandoval said, acknowledging “bureaucratic obstacles” but also thanking restoration teams and donors from all over the country whose money supplemented the insurance that paid for the work.

During the three years of work, the community got glimpses of the restoration, and indeed, many thought the opening would be sooner.

In September, church leaders offered a glimpse, ahead of a Mass that celebrated the end of its jubilee. The Mission opened its doors to the public during a one-day event on Sept. 8. A Mass two days later celebrated the founding of the mission. But it closed again for additional art restoration work, which required a dust-free environment. At the time it was projected to reopen in early December. But delays persisted.

History professor Steven Hackel and Emma Thorne-Christy, exhibition designer with ETCx Design Studio in LA, work on a new exhibition at the Mission San Gabriel Museum in San Gabriel on Friday, May 26, 2023. (Courtesy UC Riverside/Stan Lim)

Yve Chavez, a Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians member and assistant professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma. Chavez is the exhibition’s associate curator. (Photo courtesy of UC Riverside and Yve Chavez)

Archbishop José H. Gomez celebrates Mass to mark 250 years of the Archdiocese and the closing of the Jubilee Year at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel on Saturday, September 10, 2022. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Contributing Photographer)

The Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. The location sustained major damage from a July 2020 fire, but will be open to the public for a service this Friday. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

A worker paints a door next to the altar inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Contributing Photographer)

The balcony of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

The altar of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

The balcony of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

The altar of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

The balcony of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

A newly constructed ceiling at the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Workers build the altar inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

RLA Conservation worker, Sonia Jerez Frap, paints some architecture inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Workers build the altar inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. The location sustained major damage from a July 2020 fire, but will be open to the public for a service this Saturday. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

A newly constructed ceiling at the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Spectra worker, Lisandro Corleto, paints a staircase inside the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Workers build the altar inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. . (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Spectra worker, Lisandro Corleto, paints a staircase inside the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Workers observe the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

Workers observe the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. . (Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

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‘A complex history’

While California’s missions are still beloved by many people of faith, the blaze at Mission San Gabriel and its restoration came as the legacy of missions throughout California spur significant debate.

The San Gabriel Mission, founded in 1771, was the fourth of what would become 21 Spanish missions in modern-day California, all established with a goal of converting Native Americans to Christianity, in the process expanding the Spanish empire.

Serra, who founded the first nine missions including the San Gabriel Mission, has come deeper scrutiny in recent years, as part of a broader reckoning with racial injustice across the country.

Back in 2020, Gomez wrote that he has “come to understand how the image of Father Serra and the missions evokes painful memories for some people.”

Alecia Ballin prays outside the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel Sunday, July 12, 2020, after a fire destroyed much of the 249-year-old mission early Saturday. (Photo by David Rosenfeld/SCNG)

But, he would add, “The real St. Junípero fought a colonial system where natives were regarded as ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages,’ whose only value was to serve the appetites of the white man.

“St. Junípero did not impose Christianity, he proposed it,” Gomez added. “For him, the greatest gift he could offer was to bring people to the encounter with Jesus Christ.”

That has not stopped many critics reflecting on Serra’s legacy to see him as an invader of indigenous lands. Church officials say they are trying to acknowledge the historical impact of the Mission on Indigenous people.

During the Mission’s jubilee Mass in September, in the church’s courtyard before the Mass, Chief Anthony Morales of the Gabrieleño/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians led a special blessing.

Gomez said the blessing represented a unity in remembering a “first-generation of Catholics in Los Angeles, including of the Gabrielino Tongva, the first peoples of this land.”

Church officials and some scholars say the reopening of a “re-imagined” Mission museum attempts to face what they said is a “complex history” while seeking to add a more comprehensive layer to the narratives on the Mission’s impact in the region. Those narratives up to now have often been much in part a Eurocentric story that revolved around legacies of Spanish colonization and Catholic missionization.

“We used to have a story focused on the missionaries of this area,” said Steven Hackel, a UC Riverside history professor who secured several grants, including $25,000 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and $30,000 from the California Bishops Council to help cover costs for his team’s work on the museum. “Now we brought as much as we could of Native people, mainly the Gabrieleño community, who along with other Indigenous groups had lived in these lands for more than 10,000 years prior to the colonization period.”

Indeed, as UC Riverside noted in announcing the professor’s role, the Mission, built by native labor, is the site of 5,600 Native American burials. But scholars noted that Native voice, knowledge and history until now have not been weaved into the Mission museum’s curatorial practices or gallery displays.

Hackel worked alongside a team of collaborators, including associate curator Yve Chavez, a Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians member and assistant professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma.

“I think what’s been unusual here — and both challenging and exciting — has been our work to create a narrative of the mission’s history that honors and reflects diverse interpretations of the history of the mission and its many legacies,” said Hackel in a statement.

RLA Conservation worker, Sonia Jerez Frap, paints some architecture inside of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in San Gabriel on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2022. The location sustained major damage from a July 2020 fire.(Photo by Michael Ares, Contributing Photographer)

The museum, which opens July 1, includes a Wall of Names, a comprehensive list of 7,054 Native Americans who were once baptized at Misión San Gabriel Arcángel.

An exhibit, “Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, 1771-1900: Natives, Missionaries, and the Birth of Catholicism in Los Angeles,” is the culmination of a multi-year effort to engage Native consultants on a history of the Mission in what would become Los Angeles through baptismal records, textiles, baskets, paintings, and audio recordings. Among the museum’s 30 artifacts is a space dedicated to the contemporary Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians.

“We are not a federally recognized tribe, so the mission is an important space for our history and community,” said Chavez in a statement from UC Riverside, echoing a broader attempt in California to inform people on Native American History. “We are still part of a living community, with many of our members still active Mission San Gabriel parishioners. Through this exhibition we also want to give non-native audiences a look at how many people were here and hope they walk across the breezeway from the main museum to the building where community photos are on view to see we are still here, living in our neighborhoods and communities.”

The Wall of Names is a memorial in honor of the Native American community. The wall is a complete name list of 7,054 Native Americans who were once baptized at Mission San Gabriel, between 1771 and 1848. It also includes the person’s tribal affiliation. (Photo courtesy of UC Riverside)

‘His heart beat for the Mission’

Sandoval was mindful of one person who won’t be at the special ceremony for dignitaries and Indigenous representatives in the coming week.– physically anyway.

The late Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles David O’Connell was honored during a special bilingual prayer service led by Archbishop José H. Gomez at the Religious Education Congress 2023 (RECongress 2023) at the Arena of the Anaheim Convention Center on Sunday, Feb. 26. Photo: Screenshot from livecast

Bishop David O’Connell, whose fatal shooting in March stunned the Southern California Roman Catholic community, was the top administrator for the Archdiocese’s San Gabriel Valley region and was engaged with the project to restore the Mission. One of the first people on scene when the fire broke, he would later raise funds for the project and advocated for the more comprehensive accounting of the Mission’s impact on Indigenous people.

“His heart beat for the Mission,” Sandoval said, reflecting on an image he still remembers of O’Connell praying at the scene of the fire, clutching his Rosary, “eyes raised to Heaven.”

Sandoval added: “Our hearts will be a little sad because he will physically not be with us.”

Things to Know:

The Mission’s reopening date is pegged to the beatification of Junipero Serra by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988. In the United States, the Church celebrates that date on July 1.
Mission San Gabriel was founded by Spanish Franciscans in 1771 as a small outpost in what is now Whittier. It moved to its present-day location in 1775, and is the fourth of the 21 Catholic California missions.
Records indicate that an estimated 90,000 Native people came to California’s 21 missions at some point. At the time the Spanish arrived in California in 1769, the Gabrieleño population stood at 5,000.
Mission Museum visitors will experience 36 reproductions, two videos, five infographics, 30 original artifacts, and 12 audio components. The audio features a contemporary reading of the interrogation and testimony of Toypurina, a Native woman arrested and jailed during an attempted 1785 Native rebellion at the mission. It was voiced by actors from the Autry’s Native Voices theatre group.

Source: UC Riverside

Staff writer Ethan Huang contributed to this article.

Orange County Register

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3 years after fire nearly destroyed it, Mission San Gabriel is ready to reopen

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