Sadness Among the Faithful : Religion: Longtime worshipers accept with resignation the Catholic Church’s plan to replace venerable St. Vibiana’s with a new $45-million Downtown complex.

In a ritual that has become an integral part of his life over the last 68 years, Ricardo Moran blessed himself with holy water before Sunday’s Mass at historic St. Vibiana’s Cathedral.

This time, though, the devout 86-year-old Catholic did so with a sense of sadness and resignation, knowing that his beloved parish church would be torn down for a more grandiose church center.

“This place is like a family member to me,” said Moran, a retired waiter who first attended the church as a young man newly arrived from Mexico. “It’s sad because I have so many memories here, but we all have to go.”

On Sunday, two days after church officials announced that the 119-year-old Downtown landmark would be torn down and replaced by a $45-million church and conference center, parishioners attended Mass with mixed emotions.

Many--their family members, even themselves, baptized or married at the church’s ornate marble-and-onyx altar--were dismayed because such an enduring symbol in their lives would be gone; yet they also were pleased because it will be replaced by a complex more befitting the headquarters of the nation’s most populous Roman Catholic archdiocese.

Like the Skid Row neighborhood surrounding it, St. Vibiana’s has fallen into disrepair: Its white plaster walls are scuffed and dirty, and its gold-colored barrel-vaulted roof is cracked and faded.

Named--at the request of Pope Pius IX--in honor of St. Vibiana, a 3rd-Century virgin martyr whose relics were found in 1853 amid catacombs near Rome’s Appian Way, the cathedral has twice survived efforts to tear it down. Declared a Los Angeles historic cultural monument in 1963, the building was damaged in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and again last year during the Northridge temblor.

Citing the high costs of repairing the quake damage, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony announced plans Friday for a new church seating about 2,400 people and an 800-seat conference center. The construction--which church and city officials hope will help to revitalize the city’s Downtown core--will be financed in large part with gifts of $25 million from the Dan Murphy Foundation and $10 million from the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation.

After hearing or reading news reports of the plans, worried churchgoers had flooded the parish office with calls, fearing that the baroque Spanish-style structure would be immediately razed.

But at Sunday’s 10 a.m. service, Msgr. John W. Rohde assured the 120 people there that it would be about two years before the cathedral is razed. And even then, Rohde said, church officials would probably rent a building nearby so that Mass could be celebrated without interruption as it has been since St. Vibiana’s opened in 1876.

“A lot of people have jumped to conclusions,” Rohde told them. “(But) we are not abandoning you as a parish community.”

His words were reassuring to Moran and his wife, Marguerita, who nodded their heads in approval as they sat on wooden pews between the graceful white columns of the nearly empty church.

“This is like home. This is a piece of us,” Ricardo Moran said of the church, where his two sons and three grandchildren were baptized and attended religious classes.

“But you have to make progress,” added Marguerita Moran.

For Rudolfo Roldan too, St. Vibiana’s is a special place.

The 60-year-old Highland Park man, who owns a plumbing company, grew up in the Downtown area and attended classes at an old brick building that used to house the church’s grammar school before it was torn down in the early 1950s.

“I’ve been coming here for so many years that this is like my home,” said Roldan, who described himself as “devastated” when he heard the news that the cathedral would be torn down.

“But I realized that life goes on,” he said.

The highlight of Roldan’s half-century with the church came in 1987, when he attended welcoming ceremonies for Pope John Paul II. St. Vibiana’s was the headquarters for the Pope during his two-day visit to Los Angeles, and the cathedral was packed with dignitaries during the welcoming and adorned with magnificent sprays of yellow and white flowers--the papal colors.

“It felt like you were in heaven,” Roldan said of the event.

After Sunday’s service, several visitors walked in and snapped pictures of the historic cathedral. One woman said she had come to pay her respects to St. Vibiana, whose relics were brought from Rome to lie next to the altar.

Outside, a gentle rain soaked the area--just as it did 30 years ago when Laura Guzman first came to St. Vibiana’s after arriving in Los Angeles from her native Mexico.

“This was the first church I came to in this country,” said the 75-year-old grandmother, who cleans houses for a living.

“It makes me sad,” she said, “that this building will be gone.”