After Year of Building, Church Is Ready to Serve

The Rev. Msgr. Paul T. Dotson looked like a commander in chief surveying his troops Friday as he walked through the new $3-million St. Bernardine of Siena Catholic Church on Calvert Street.

As pastor, Dotson wanted to make sure everything was in place for Sunday’s dedication. The noontime ceremony will mark the culmination of a yearlong building project that transformed an architect’s rendering into a 13,000-square-foot edifice.

A new facility was needed to accommodate the church’s growing congregation--now numbering 2,300 families--and to replace an outdated sanctuary that was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Dotson said.

“The other building was plain and simple,” said Dotson, standing in front of the pulpit. “This building is simple, too, but in a different way.”

The new 850-seat church blends Old World and contemporary styles through the use of stone flooring, dark crown molding, skylights and exposed steel beams.

The original church’s bell tower, stained glass and carved renderings of the Stations of the Cross, depicting the suffering and death of Jesus, were incorporated into the new building.

Updated additions include a baptismal font, an altar, a lectern and a chair for the presiding priest. Above the pulpit is a new painting, “Christ the Teacher,” showing Jesus seated on a throne with his right hand raised in benediction and his left hand on a book of Scripture. A Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is in one corner of the church where the communion bread is kept.

Construction crews broke ground for the new building a year ago, Dotson said.

“The old building was completely demolished,” he said. “It just needed so much renovation that it was just better to start over.”

In the meantime, worship services were held in what congregants jokingly called the “Canvas Cathedral,” a tent pitched in the churchyard.

“It wasn’t insulated, so we had to run the air conditioner constantly,” Dotson said. “And it barely withstood the rains and wind during the winter.”

As the months passed, however, church members watched workers build Mission-style archways, lay Spanish roof tiles, and above the vestibule, install a stained-glass window depicting the symbol of St. Bernardine, a reformer who focused his sermons on devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus.

On Sunday, parishioners will worship in the church for the first time, along with Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, although many have gotten a sneak preview.

“It is beautiful,” said Sharon Galindo, a secretary at the church. “With the mural above the pulpit, it’s almost like Christ is there and you are personally talking to him one-on-one.”

St. Bernardine of Siena was founded Aug. 4, 1962, when James Francis Cardinal McIntyre activated the parish to meet the spiritual needs of Catholic families who had recently moved onto the Platt Ranch in the West Valley.

A handful of families met in a house on Calvert Street for Masses celebrated by Father Richard Murray, the first pastor.

Ground was broken for a church at the current location in 1964.

The new church becomes the latest parish addition. Others have included a meeting hall, an elementary school and a rectory.