Alumni See Hope of Saving Cathedral High

After a yearlong battle to save Cathedral High School from closure and sale by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, supporters of the inner-city school are taking new hope from Archbishop Roger Mahony’s recent installation as archdiocesan leader and his establishment of a committee to review the controversial issue.

At Mahony’s request, a panel of religious and community leaders is being formed to review the status of the school’s sale and to make recommendations to the archdiocese about its future, according to those who have been asked to serve on the committee.

Auxiliary Bishop Donald Montrose, rector of St. John’s Seminary College in Camarillo, who was asked by Mahony to chair the new committee, said that the group initially will gather information to determine the status of the school’s sale.

“We’ll have to look and try to find out if there are any options,” he said.

The seven-acre school site near Chinatown was placed in escrow for sale to a Hong Kong developer more than a year ago for an estimated $11.5 million. Further details about the transaction or the close of escrow have not been revealed by either the archdiocese or the buyer.

News that the archdiocese had sold the property, without informing students, parents or the Christian Brothers who run the school, drew sharp criticism from school alumni and others who charged that the school was being sacrificed for the financial benefit of the archdiocese. Most of the current 320 students at the school, which has educated successive waves of immigrant children over its 60-year history, are Latino.

Despite public demonstrations, strong opposition from a group of alumni who filed a lawsuit earlier this year to try to stop the sale, as well as action by the City Council to delay the closure by designating the school as a cultural monument and declaring a temporary building moratorium on the site, archdiocesan officials had remained firm in their public statements about the decision to sell the school. They said that the school was being sold to consolidate the student bodies of downtown Catholic high schools in the face of dwindling enrollment.

No freshman class was admitted to Cathedral for the current school year and archdiocese officials said the school will close in June, 1987.

Although Mahony has not yet made a public statement on the school’s future, backers of the school say they are encouraged by his stated pledge to serve the underprivileged and the poor, as well as by his decision last week to accept the resignation of Msgr. Benjamin G. Hawkes, who arranged the school’s sale. Hawkes, who served as vicar general under Mahony’s predecessor, Cardinal Timothy Manning, built the archdiocese into one of the wealthiest in the country through two decades of real estate transactions.

Henry Alfaro, spokesman for the alumni group, Friends of Cathedral, called establishment of the committee by Mahony, who was installed as archbishop last week, “a source of optimism.”

“Whereas before the doors seemed to be closed completely, now there is hope,” he said, adding that Mahony has agreed to meet with the alumni group after his return next week from a trip to Rome. “Our hope is that the new archbishop will be receptive to the plea that we and the community have made for such a long time to save an institution that has been so vital to the educational system in Los Angeles.”

No archdiocese spokesman was available for comment on formation of the committee.