Appeals Panel Rejects Plea to Raze St. Vibiana’s

Giving St. Vibiana’s Cathedral another lease on life, a state Court of Appeal panel unanimously rejected the Roman Catholic archdiocese’s pleas Thursday that it be allowed to quickly demolish the 120-year-old church.

The court action continued the Los Angeles Conservancy’s unbroken string of legal victories in its attempt to save the Spanish Baroque-style church in downtown.

“It’s nice to have the court say you are right,” said Linda Dishman, executive director of the conservancy. She suggested that “all the energy and talent and gusto that was put into these lawsuits, on both sides,” should now be put toward restoring the building.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has previously said he would move the $50-million replacement cathedral to a still unchosen downtown site because of the legal battles and other problems at the current site at 2nd and Main streets. Mahony is willing to sell the old, earthquake-damaged cathedral for a nonreligious use, but, according to Dishman, no potential buyer has come forward.

The archdiocese and the city had sought emergency writs overturning two preliminary injunctions by Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien, who had held that a thorough environmental impact study was needed before demolition. Church attorneys contended that such a delay in demolition would violate Catholics’ freedom of worship.

On Thursday, a three-judge court of the 2nd Appellate District in Los Angeles upheld O’Brien in a 22-page decision and in a related single-page ruling.

The appeals panel declared that “on the record presented, there does not appear to be a significant impact on free exercise of religion. While it is true that the cathedral remains unoccupied and cannot be used, that would also be the situation if the cathedral had been demolished.”

In addition, the appeals panel agreed with O’Brien that state environmental law applies to St. Vibiana’s even though the City Council removed the church from the city’s list of formal landmarks last month to hasten razing. The state law requires serious study to see if a historic property can be saved.

Thursday’s rulings leave several options for the archdiocese. It can appeal to the state Supreme Court for quick review or it can wait for a full trial before O’Brien, who is thought unlikely to reverse himself. Another possibility is for the archdiocese and city to conduct the environmental study that the conservancy wants.

Archdiocese attorney John McNicholas said Thursday that he was quite disappointed by the rulings. He said he needed to study them before he could recommend a course of action to the cardinal.

Mahony was out of town on vacation and could not be reached for comment, according to his spokesman, Father Gregory Coiro. An archdiocese statement released by Coiro said the Catholic community regrets the court’s action, but the rulings “will have little real impact on site selection since the church is already looking forward with great excitement to building the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at another location.” (Mahony last month announced that the new cathedral would not be named St. Vibiana’s.)

The battle over St. Vibiana’s began in earnest June 1, when the archdiocese began dismantling the bell tower without the proper permit. A city inspector and a court ruling stopped the work and the matter has since gone through a bumpy round of legal, political and financial maneuvering. Meanwhile, the archdiocese has removed artifacts, statues and stained-glass windows from the church, which remains barricaded under city order as a seismic hazard.

Events have moved so quickly that one part of Thursday’s ruling is already moot. The archdiocese had argued that any further delays in razing the church would make it impossible to meet the cardinal’s deadline to dedicate the new cathedral Sept. 4, 2000, on the millennium feast day for Our Lady of the Angels, the city’s patroness. But the appeals panel said that church leaders had not proved that missing the date “will result in a significant impact on the free exercise of religion.”

The deadline issue disappeared because the cardinal announced July 22 that he would abandon the original site and look elsewhere downtown. Mahony’s decision leaves no reasons for city officials to push for demolition, said conservancy attorney Jack Rubens.

“For all practical purposes, we’ve won,” Rubens said Thursday. “Now someone has to tell the city that the war is over and they can stop fighting.”