Santa Ana May Be Cathedral Site

With its membership rolls growing rapidly, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange has launched an aggressive expansion campaign that will include six church renovations, five new parishes and perhaps a new, grand cathedral in Santa Ana.

Church officials said Friday that they have agreed to buy 15 acres of bean fields near South Coast Plaza from C.J. Segerstrom and Sons for a church that could be a new cathedral, the home church of Bishop Tod D. Brown.

A study to be completed in mid-January will help determine whether the new Santa Ana property will be the site of a cathedral or a neighborhood parish, diocesan officials said.

“We’re always looking for other properties because we’re faced with significant increases in growth and no inventory,” said Msgr. Larry Baird, diocesan spokesman.

The bishop’s current seat is at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange--a parish that, like many others in the county, is fast outgrowing its space. Nearly 5,000 families attend services there. The church must hold seven Masses each Sunday to accommodate them.

“The situation at Holy Family is not unlike other churches,” Baird said.

Church officials said Catholics in Orange County now number more than 1 million, up from 598,663 in 1995. Latinos make up more than half of the county’s Catholic population, Baird said, and much of the increase is concentrated in Santa Ana, where the diocese plans two new churches.

The diocese is still negotiating to buy the 15-acre site from the Segerstrom company and will not sign a final agreement until the city approves preliminary plans for the project, which could take several months.

“We have an agreement to sell,” Segerstrom spokesman Paul Freeman said. “So long as it becomes evident that the city will approve the use, the deal will go forward.”

City officials expressed enthusiasm. “We’re very excited to see the proposal,” Santa Ana City Manager David N. Ream said, adding that he expects the approval process to go smoothly.

Neither the diocese nor the seller would reveal the purchase price, nor would church officials speculate on the cost of the new building.

A new church also is planned on a site at Harbor Boulevard and 1st Street in Santa Ana. The two will be the first new Catholic sanctuaries in the city since Our Lady of the Pillar was built in 1965 on West 6th Street.

The diocese also plans new churches in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Aliso Viejo.

“You can follow where the church’s growth is by looking at where the new construction is,” Baird said. “San Francisco Solano Church next to Santa Margarita High School was built in 1989.” Before that, Santiago de Compostela was completed in Lake Forest in 1989, and St. Timothy’s in Laguna Niguel in 1980.

The diocese’s building plan raises the possibility of a great cathedral in Santa Ana. When the diocese was established 25 years ago, officials turned an ordinary parish church in Orange into the Holy Family Cathedral.

“I’m very excited about the opportunity to build a cathedral in Orange County to provide the facilities necessary to allow for the church’s growth in the next century,” said Tim Strader, a prominent Catholic and president of Starpointe Ventures, a real estate development company in Irvine.

Leia Smith of the Catholic Worker, an independently funded nonprofit organization that provides services for the poor, said she wants to make sure the diocese has its priorities in order before building a cathedral.

“My hope is that the bishop will always ask this question through the process: ‘How is what we’re going to do going to affect the poorest among us?’ ” Smith said. If the church fails to ask that question, she said, “we’re in danger. But if the cathedral is going to be in Santa Ana, that would allow us to have another parish in an area that really needs more.”

Catholic Worker members in Los Angeles have expressed outrage over the $163-million price tag for Our Lady of the Angels, the cathedral under construction on Temple Street between Grand Avenue and Hill Street.

Smith said she was she heartened that the Orange County diocese appears to be taking a more “holistic” approach.

The church near South Coast Plaza will serve a new community of homes the Segerstrom company plans to build nearby, along with a high school and recreational facilities. An environmental study on the combined project will begin in about two weeks, the company said.