At Mission’s 200th, a Nod to the Past

Under an unusually clear late-summer sky, the kind that would have been common in the pre-smog year 1797, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony led more than 400 worshipers in a Mass on Sunday to celebrate the bicentennial of Mission San Fernando.

Unlike the early Masses held at the mission, nuns arrived in minibuses, bicycle cops pedaled in the parking lot, and the faithful snapped photos of the cardinal with disposable cameras. But while much has changed in the 200 years since Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen established the mission, much, it was clear Sunday, has remained the same--from the slow recitation of Scriptures to the tolling of bells to antsy ways of 12-year-old boys in church.

“My cousin told me that the Mass here was only 45 minutes,” Enrique Sanchez, 12, of San Fernando whispered with a pained expression as the service passed the one-hour mark. “I guess not today.”

Sunday’s gathering was the religious finale to a week of celebrations marking the mission’s bicentennial and the influence it--and California’s 20 other missions--have had on everything in the state from architecture to agriculture.

“I tell people to buy within 10 miles of a mission: good soil, water and wind,” said William Hannon, a South Bay businessman and philanthropist who has erected about 70 bronze likenesses across the state of California’s best-known mission-builder, Father Junipero Serra.

“Father Serra saw that this is where the Indians had lived for hundreds of years,” Hannon added. “He said, ‘They know what they’re doing.’ ”

In the two centuries since the founding of Mission San Fernando, Rey de Espana, the region has seen radical shifts in cultural and religious philosophy, however, and the early missionaries’ interaction with Native American culture has been increasingly criticized as destructive.

Many Indians died of influenza, tuberculosis and other diseases introduced by the missionaries and Europeans. Many who survived fell into indebted servitude when the mission system collapsed.

In his homily during the Mass, Mahony sought to soften some of the criticism of the early settlers.

“We cannot gloss over errors or mistakes made by the Spaniards, the missionaries or anyone else,” Mahony said. “That is part of history.”

But the cardinal said, “We have to look back not through the lenses of today but through the times and understandings of 200 years ago. . . . The spiritual emphasis of the Franciscan friars must be understood. Everything else [to them] was only secondary to the evangelization of people.”

As Mahony’s voice rolled through the cavernous mission church--with the help of high-tech speakers hanging from the ancient timbers of the ceiling--Connie Alvarado took her two children, Ashley, 10, and Angelo, 4, outside for a walk in the mission’s garden, a sanctuary filled with fig, olive and pomegranate trees and occupied by peafowl.

Part Mexican American, part Native American, Alvarado said: “We’re here to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the mission and the Indians who lived here. We’re celebrating both.”

Indeed, although Mahony addressed the serious issues of the church’s impact on Native Americans and the importance of multiculturalism, mostly the day was one of reverent celebration.

The mission has weathered wind, rain, earthquakes and, for part of the 19th century, serious neglect. It has withstood the decline of its neighborhood, which was patrolled Sunday by gang members in addition to police, as well as the decline of religion in America.

It is 200 years old and in splendid shape.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon unveiled a sign commemorating the bicentennial. A staffer from the office of Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) passed along greetings from President Clinton to the audience.

Msgr. Francis Weber, the resident archivist and historian for the Los Angeles archdiocese, noted that 1797 was also the year the Navy warship Old Ironsides was launched. Just as the ship was refurbished and sailed in Boston Harbor this summer, the mission underwent repairs from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and was renovated for its bicentennial.

“What a lovely morning,” one woman said to a friend. “What a lovely place.”