By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Rebuilt in 1931 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the church at Mission San Diego features a broken crucifix that intentionally has not been repaired.
There are no arms on the figure of Jesus on the cross, but in 1970 when Monsignor Brent Eagen saw it in an antique shop in Rome, he thought it was just the right age to fit in with the historic mission and just the right size to cover the painted cross on the altar.
“It dismayed him that it did not have arms, but everything else was perfect about it,” said Janet Bartel, the chief docent at Mission San Diego. “So he had it crated up, brought it back here and figured that he would have a craftsman put arms on it. But when one of the nuns next door at the Sisters of Nazareth saw it, she said that St. Theresa had said something to the effect of ‘let the people do Christ’s work.’ So it is a reminder to us at Mission San Diego that we should be out doing the work of Christ, we should be the arms of Christ.”
Since the American Bicentennial in 1976, the church has been ranked as a basilica, not because of its architecture but because “it is a church of very important historical significance,” Bartel said. “It is an honor bestowed upon a church by the Pope. If the Pope wanted to visit San Diego this would be his official headquarters.” Above the pulpit hangs a canopy in the papal colors indicating the church’s status.
The designs of the old mission churches of California were dictated by pragmatism, Bartel said.
“The original mission churches wouldn’t have been this large, but they would have been long and narrow because they had no way of joining beams,” said Bartel, pointing to the roof. “”So they would have cut down the tallest trees they could find, line them up side by side and the shortest tree would determine the width of any building.”
Of all the buildings around the mission quadrangle, the church by design was the largest because it was “the most important building on the site,” the docent said. “So once they decided how wide the building could be, they would dig trenches, place the smooth round rocks in for drainage, and begin building the adobe. They would put a tree there and slowly lift it up, because they didn’t have any cranes. … And then they would cover it with tule or bamboo.”
After Mission San Diego was burned down in an attack in 1775, the Padres realized that red tile clay roofs were preferable because they were fire proof. Windows in the adobe walls were placed high up, because “the adobe would have been four or five feet thick and structurally it would not have been safe at all if all those openings for windows were at the bottom.”
Among the images painted on the pulpit lectern is a pineapple—the international symbol of hospitality. In 1989, when executives of the Key West, Florida-based Historic Tours of America (HTA) visited San Diego to decide whether to open Old Town Trolley Tours of San Diego, the pineapple visibly moved Bobby Bernreuter, who then was in charge of HTA’s operations in the State of Florida. Active in the Catholic Church in Key West, he took the presence of the pineapple painting in the first church of San Diego as a favorable omen. The company, which names its trolleys, located an operation in San Diego, and named one of its vehicles after Father Junipero Serra, the mission’s founder.
There are statues and numerous portraits in the area of the altar, among them a painting of St. Didacus (who is known in Spanish as San Diego) that was brought to San Diego in the ships of Father Junipero Serra’s expedition and restored in 1987, said Bartel. Nearby is a statue of the Virgin Mary. It depicts her pregnant with the Christ child, yet embroidered on her dress is a cross symbolizing how that child would die.
In its long history between 1769 and the present, Mission San Diego had been moved, burned down, rebuilt on several occasions, stripped by Mexico from Catholic Church ownership, used as military headquarters by the U.S. Army, restored to the Catholic Church by President Abraham Lincoln, plundered of its bricks and other building materials during its period of abandonment, and reduced to rubble. Fighting the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps was authorized during President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to put the mission back together on the basis of plans dating back to 1812.
In over 240 years of its history, many of the church’s possessions were hidden away for safety or carted away by those with less altruistic motives. As the Padres kept meticulous records which survive to this day, it is known what sacred objects were in the original church.
For example, there were statues of three saints –the archangels Gabriel, Rafael and Michael—at Mission San Diego. “When this mission was abandoned a lot of the stuff went back to the Franciscans,” the order to which Father Serra belonged. As the Franciscans are still at San Luis Rey, they inherited considerable property that had once been at Mission San Diego, including the statues of the three saints. Pointing to a statue of San Gabriel, Bartel commented, “we were only able to get this one back.”
Among the other figures and paintings at the front of the church is a depiction of the Virgin Mary. Bartel said that it came from San Antonio de Padua, “which is Italian, but this statue has Asian eyes, so we feel that it came originally from the Philippines. It will be going to San Francisco temporarily where there is an exhibition of Asian art planned.”
A painting called “Our Lady of Life” once belonged to the Mission but now, “much to our consternation,” is in the hands of the San Diego Historical Society. The mission has commissioned an artist to make a copy.
“And this statuary,” the guide continued, “is Costa Rican—Our Lady of Angels.” Part of the statue includes a black Madonna within an oval. “The story is that there was a woman who found a wood Madonna. She brought it home and she was telling someone about it, but then she went to take it out, it wasn’t there. She went back to where she found it, and it was on the wood pile. They tell the priest about it, and the priest says (disbelievingly), ‘yeah, right.’ They give him the Madonna and he puts it in his desk. But when he opened his drawer later, it wasn’t there. It was back at the wood pile. Supposedly that was one of the apparitions of Mary and she wanted a Cathedral built on that site. People from Costa Rica come here in May and September, and they recently had it restored.”
Another sculpture is of Father Serra, and it was done in his native Majorca.
At the back of the sanctuary is a bapistry, which is no longer used. The baptismal font is a copy of the one in which Serra was baptized in Majorca. And there is a painting of St. Anne (mother of the Virgin Mary), that may be older than the original mission.
The Mission Church is today both a place of history and present-day worship. Masses are celebrated in this church twice on weekdays, and five times on Sunday at 7, 8, 10, and 11 a.m. and at 12 and 5:30 p.m.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. Preceding was previously published on examiner.com