The Mission : Impending Visit of the Pope Prompts Many to Discover--or Rediscover--Spiritual Oasis

Although it’s just a short drive from his home in Pacoima, Matias Catalan had never bothered to stop by the San Fernando Mission until he learned of Pope John Paul II’s plans to visit in mid-September.

Last week, Catalan, a self-described Christian of Mayan descent, put aside his auto-repair wrenches and visited the 190-year-old Roman Catholic complex in Mission Hills.

Inside the mission’s cool, dim museum, the stocky mechanic was particularly taken with the cases of iron utensils and native baskets that recalled the days when 1,000 barefoot Indians trod the land and cultivated its fruits under the tutelage of the Spanish friars.

“I didn’t know they had so much here,” Catalan said. “If it weren’t for the Pope’s visit, I still wouldn’t know we had all this history so close by.”

Catholics and non-Catholics alike have taken a greater interest in the mission since the Pope announced plans to hold a private conference there Sept. 16 with about 300 U. S. bishops.

Mission employees could not quantify the increase in tourism. But those familiar with the daily life on the tranquil grounds, from the rector to the woman who feeds dozens of stray cats prowling its shady walkways, said more people have toured the mission this summer.

“Everyone is so excited that he’s coming here,” gift shop employee Stacy Unger said as she helped a customer select a commemorative pin and a calendar featuring the pontiff. “It’s been really busy.”

Open seven days a week from 9 a.m. until 4:15 p.m., the mission depends primarily on admission fees, revenue from weddings and gift shop sales for its upkeep, said Msgr. Francis J. Weber, the mission’s director. Adults pay $1 and children pay 50 cents. On Saturdays at 2 p.m., the mission offers guided tours.

About 32,000 people toured the grounds last year, three-fourths of them schoolchildren, Weber said, and the numbers have gone up as the Pope’s visit approaches. Even more are expected after the papal sojourn. Weber said: “I’m not a prophet, of course, but I think people are going to want to see what he saw here.”

The mission became a “must-see” to visitor Frances Silva when she heard the Pope was coming. It has to be “a very special place for God to send his representative here,” said Silva, who lives in La Puente. “His visit is a blessing we want to share by coming here ourselves.”

When the Pope arrives in the San Fernando Valley next month, he will become the first pontiff to view a California mission. Weber has speculated that the San Fernando Mission was chosen because it is the only one within Los Angeles city limits and because of its beauty.

Founded in 1797 by Father Fermin Lasuen in the waning years of the Spanish Empire, Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana was once one of the most elaborately decorated of the 21 missions in California, said Norman Neuerburg, a professor emeritus of art at California State University, Dominguez Hills. The 17th mission built in the state, it was named in honor of the sainted 13th-Century king of Spain, Ferdinand III, and situated near the confluence of four streams.

Neuerburg, whose ties to the mission go back 46 years to his duties as a tour guide there, is working to restore decorative paintings on the walls of one of the mission’s rooms before the Pope arrives. Visitors can see the 61-year-old artist at work this week as he puts his finishing touches on the wall decorations.

Contrary to popular belief, the missions’ interiors were far from stark. Rather, the padres imported the European practice of painting the walls with brightly colored floral and marble motifs, Neuerburg said.

Working from old photographs that depict the room before its interior walls were plastered over during restoration after the 1971 earthquake, Neuerburg, who helped design the elaborately decorated interior of the J.Paul Getty Museum, first sketches the motifs onto tracing paper. He then transfers the designs to the walls with carbon paper and paints them in vivid reds, oranges and blues.

Finally, he covers the surface of the room with a thin whitewash, which is easily wiped off the designs, softening their newness and providing a contrasting background.

Most of the decorations were used to ornament the church and the convento, an enormous building just outside the standard mission quadrangle. Formerly a shelter for travelers, priests and members of the corporal’s guard, San Fernando’s convento today is used to display paintings and furniture from the collection of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Still intact is the famous 21-arch colonnade that fronts busy Mission Boulevard.

The restoration was made possible by a group of business and civic leaders who organized the Mission Preservation Commission in 1985. The commission has raised $70,000 to restore the wall decorations and to clean and repair some of the oil paintings on display, co-chairman William H. Hannon said.

“As a child, my parents took me and my five brothers to every mission in the state of California, and I’ve had a warm feeling for them ever since,” Hannon said. “They’re not a parish over there at San Fernando, so they can’t pass the plate. They have to rely on groups like us for substantial contributions.”

A more critical restoration effort, one that saved the mission from literally melting into the ground, began in 1903 under the auspices of the Landmarks Club, founded by newspaperman Charles Fletcher Lummis.

Such historical tidbits are absorbed by many of the mission’s visitors, including members of the Davidson family of Sacramento, who were stopping at their 11th mission in less than a week recently.

Karen Davidson, 8, will study mission history when she enters the fourth grade this fall. And the family members have become amateur authorities on mission history, collecting post cards and taking photographs of the entire chain.

“Catholicism is such an interesting religion because it has so much history,” said Mary Davidson, 34, as she ducked under a low convento door and entered the cool, dimly lit building. “I think everything should be done to preserve it.”

The same four-foot-thick adobe walls that kept the Davidsons cool and muffled the sound of traffic from nearby Mission Boulevard almost proved responsible for the mission’s downfall at the turn of the century, said David Hornbeck, professor of geography at California State University, Northridge and an authority on the economic history of the missions.

Because adobe melts into the earth if left exposed, the mission rapidly fell into disrepair once its protective red tile roofs were left to rot in the years after its secularization in 1836, Hornbeck said. By 1896, the once-grand mission property, which had spanned the San Fernando Valley, was being used as a hog farm. Shocked by its decrepit state, Lummis’ group raised money to put temporary roofs on some of the structures.

Incongruous as it may seem, the mission’s stint as a pig farm was not entirely out of character. San Fernando was noted for its swine in the days when San Diego’s grapes were considered the best in the mission system and San Miguel was producing the best wrought iron, Hornbeck said.

Prodigious as its pork production was, the mission did not lack for wheat, corn, olives and claret made from its own extensive red-grape vines, Hornbeck said. Visitors still descend into the cool wine cellar where Indians tromped on the fat, juicy fruit.

Also displayed in the convento are a press used to form the characteristic red roof tiles, a crudely fashioned confessional and several doors with large holes carved out of their lower parts.

Cats for the Cool

Apparently, the adobe walls kept the padres so cool that they kept cats to keep their laps warm and for “critter control,” Bernie Gunshinan, a volunteer guide, said as he led visitors on a tour. The holes allowed the cats, whose descendants are said to roam the grounds, access to the entire 243-foot-long by 50-foot-wide convento.

A heavy confessional standing in one of the convento rooms was designed for use by both sexes. Men had to confess their sins face to face with the priest, whereas women were protected by a latticework screen, Gunshinan said.

“I had no idea all this existed,” said Janet Jones, 24, a hostess at a Burbank restaurant who stopped to tour the mission last week on her way home from a doctor’s appointment. “I thought it was all In-N-Out hamburger stands and freeways around here.”

No Hint of Oasis

Near the San Diego and Golden State freeways, the mission gives no hint from the outside of the oasis-like atmosphere now being discovered by scores of visitors.

But Gladys and Herb Sherwin of Woodland Hills have long known of its charms, having visited the mission several times.

Recently, the retired couple sat on a bench under the shade of an olive tree facing the quiet quadrangle. Gladys was in the nearest thing to heaven on Earth, she said.

“We’re pretending that the Pope has already been here and we’ve walked in his footsteps,” she said. “And, if we sit here as long as we feel like doing, we’ll be here when the Pope comes.”