Murdoch Gives $10 Million for New Catholic Cathedral : Religion: Cardinal Mahony hails ‘splendid gift’ from tycoon’s foundation. Church nears its fund-raising goal.

In a major boost for the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s planned downtown cathedral, media and sports tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s family foundation has donated $10 million toward the $163.2-million goal.

The contribution, announced Thursday by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, is the single largest gift for the 3,000-seat Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels since the project was launched in January 1995 with $35 million from two other foundations. At the outset, Mahony said he planned to build a cathedral that would stand for at least 300 years as a monument to faith and civic activism.

Murdoch, a nominal Presbyterian, is chairman of News Corp., a worldwide media conglomerate that includes newspapers, the Fox television network, 20th Century Fox film studio and satellite networks in Europe and Asia. Through Fox Sports, he owns the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

Meanwhile, it was learned that another major donor, whose identity was not available, informed Mahony only hours after the news conference with Murdoch that they will contribute $4 million.

Together, Murdoch’s $10-million contribution and the yet-to-be-announced $4-million gift appear to put the archdiocese well on the way toward meeting its goal to raise all $163.2 million in cash and pledges for construction by the end of this year. The combined $14 million in contributions would bring the total raised to $140 million.

Murdoch and his children, who were reared as Catholics, have given to the church before, usually quietly, Mahony said. He said the family provided scholarship funds to allow poor children to attend Catholic schools.

Mahony said that he “kind of pushed” the Murdoch family to go public and added that he hoped other corporations and groups would follow Murdoch’s lead in contributing to the cathedral.

“This is something that the city and the community needs to be proud of, stepping forward, as well as modeling to others in industry and the corporate world a responsibility to make wonderful things happen,” Mahony said.

In January 1998, Pope John Paul II, on Mahony’s nomination, awarded a papal knighthood--the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great--to Murdoch and 66 other prominent Los Angeles-area residents.

Standing on the sun-drenched site bounded by Grand Avenue, Temple and Hills streets and the Hollywood Freeway, Mahony called the Murdoch Family Foundation’s $10-million donation “an extraordinary gift.” He thanked Murdoch’s children, Lachlan, Elisabeth and James, whom Mahony said were “also instrumental in arranging this splendid gift.” In June, Murdoch and his wife, Anna, announced that they had dissolved their marriage of 31 years.

Later that month, Murdoch, 68, married television executive Wendy Deng, 31, in New York. She is his third wife.

The Murdoch money will be spent on the 55,000-square-foot cathedral conference center under construction on the eastern side of the 5.6-acre site. The center will include 13 conference rooms, as well as offices for cathedral outreach ministries, including one to assist the poor and homeless.

The new cathedral has come under criticism by Native Americans, who claim that the site contained the remains of their ancestors, and from the Catholic Worker, a lay Catholic group that serves the poor, which has criticized Mahony for spending millions on the cathedral.

But Murdoch, wearing a tan hard hat, praised Mahony’s “vision” for a “beautiful new cathedral” that will become headquarters for the nation’s largest Catholic diocese, replacing the dilapidated Cathedral of St. Vibiana at 2nd and Main streets.

“As the only place of worship in central Los Angeles, the cathedral will serve the people of Southern California as a whole. Although it is being built to assist the Catholic Church, it will clearly serve as a center for many ecumenical, interfaith and cultural endeavors,” Murdoch said.

Mahony had a quick follow-up. The cathedral, Mahony said, will be a place of welcome as well as a center of active ministries.

“The cathedral conference center will be an extraordinary place of meeting and unity in our community,” he said. “From the poorest of the poor to the most wealthy, the least influential to most powerful, everybody is always welcome and feels at home at a cathedral.”

When the cathedral project was announced 4 1/2 years ago, Mahony disclosed contributions of $25 million from the Dan Murphy Foundation and $10 million from the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation.

Although Mahony said a year ago that all construction funds would be in hand by the end of this year, either in cash or pledges, he left himself some maneuvering room Thursday. He said he was referring only to a year-end deadline for major donors.

Still, Msgr. Terrance L. Fleming, moderator of the archdiocesan curia and vicar general, said he would not be surprised if that target is met.

In any case, Mahony said he had no doubt that all $163.2 million in cash or pledges would be in hand by the time the cathedral is dedicated, probably in spring 2002. Construction is expected to be completed in mid-December 2001, Mahony said Thursday.

The cardinal said the project has not exceeded its $163.2-million “cap” on construction costs. Those costs include building the church, the underground parking structure, the great public plaza next to the cathedral, the conference center and residence.

At the same time, Mahony announced that a separate $4.6 million has been raised as part of a new fund--Our Lady of the Angels Fund--to endow the cathedral and to be used exclusively for artwork and other adornments.

That means that instead of opening what he jokingly called “a plain vanilla” cathedral, the archdiocese from the start will be able to present a showcase of religious art and furnishings to a far greater degree than imagined, he said.

Meanwhile, Murdoch’s $10-million contribution seemed to get him an immediate dividend. Fox television and Channel 11 were the only television stations invited to Thursday’s news conference.