After nearly 40 years of wandering in a desert of changing plans and dashed hopes, parishioners at Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima finally reached their Promised Land.
And not on Easter, but on a Friday of Lent.
The evening of April 4, they came in the hundreds to catch a first glimpse at their shiny new church, filling every one of its 1,030 seats and spilling into the aisles and vestibule for a long-awaited dedication Mass.
“It still seems too small,” joked Archbishop José H. Gomez in Spanish as he looked out at the standing-room-only crowd. “We’re going to have to take a second collection to buy more chairs.”
The irony was not lost on anyone. For decades, Guardian Angel’s biggest headache had been its lack of space, even if parishioners found reasons to keep cramming into the 200-seat-church with no parking lot.
Now, there would be no more folding chairs in the patio during Mass, and hopefully, thanks to a new lot with more than 200 car spaces, no more scouring the neighborhood streets for parking.
“I feel as if I’ve just been fulfilled,” said Irene Chavez after the nearly three-hour event, which drew some 1,500 people, including 30 priests. “After years and years of waiting, and not seeing anything, and then suddenly, there’s a new church built. It’s a great emotion.”
Longtime parishioners like Chavez understood that a bigger church at Guardian Angel would take divine intervention. The original one was located inside San Fernando Gardens, a low-income public housing project with a history of gang violence. Expanding it was out of the question.
Although talk of building a bigger church started as far back as the 1980s, a serious effort first took shape in the late 1990s. With the help of individual donations, food sale fundraisers, and special collections held by parishes across the LA Archdiocese’s San Fernando Pastoral Region, a lot one-mile west of the original church was acquired in 2009.
In 2014, architect JP Darling took on the building project, which was handed off in 2021 to architect Chuck Kluger after Darling’s death. With help from archdiocesan fundraisers and grants from philanthropical outfits like the Shea Foundation, construction finally broke ground in July 2023.
Before the April 4 dedication Mass, hundreds crowded the church entrance to hear remarks from those involved in the project, including Rich Villacorta of the archdiocese’s Strategic Capital Projects office, and LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez.
After the crowd sang in Spanish the words of Psalm 122, “How I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord,” Archbishop Gomez was presented with the new church’s blueprints, then its keys by contractor Chris Hoffman. Once Guardian Angel pastor Father Luis Estrada used them to open the front door, parishioners moved eagerly to get their first look at the finished project, while an usher had to reassure them: “Go in with calm, there’s room for everyone.”
After entering, many were visibly emotional.
“It’s so beautiful, so welcoming,” remarked parishioner Leticia Valdivia.
From the outside, the new church’s light adobe-colored exterior echoes the “mission style” church architecture typical in Southern California. Inside, pews made of red oak form a symmetrical, semi-circular assembly directed toward a new marble altar. Above it hangs the wooden crucifix from the old church.
But perhaps the new church’s most eye-catching feature is its oldest one: the Stations of the Cross. Donated by a local Catholic art collector, the 18th-century marble relief carvings are thought to originally be from Italy or Spain, and were restored by local artist Maria Szopinski.
Besides the stations, the church’s white walls are still mostly blank for now. But parish leaders expect that once the final construction loan is paid off, future generations will add devotional elements commonly found in most parishes, like saint statues and paintings. A mosaic wall dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, is expected in the near future.
One of the night’s most excited guests was Father Christopher Felix. Now 38, he grew up at Guardian Angel, where his father, Mario, founded an altar serving ministry for young men and where he and his 10 brothers and sisters would come to Mass on Sundays.
“We used to take up almost two pews just to sit in the church,” recalled Felix, now the administrator of St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in South LA.
Felix admits he’ll miss the “intimacy” of the old church in the projects, which will remain open as a chapel. But he expects the new Guardian Angel will be a “beacon of hope,” sending a message that the Church is still growing in this tough corner of the San Fernando Valley.
“There’s that room to grow, you can invite more people, bring everybody together,” said Felix of the new church.
During the dedication Mass, Archbishop Gomez congratulated the parish for an achievement that had been “a long time coming.”
“This church is a wonderful witness to your hope,” he said. “Also, to your patience and perseverance.”
Following the homily, the people kneeled as they recited the Litany of the Saints to invoke prayers for the new church. Then Archbishop Gomez proceeded to the heart of the liturgy’s dedication rite: installing relics belonging to St. Junípero Serra and Frances Xavier Cabrini in the altar; anointing the altar and the walls of the church with sacred chrism oil; and incensing the altar for the first time.
Among those at the bilingual dedication Mass were two figures who’d helped shepherd the project from its origins: Bishop Gerald Wilkerson, the San Fernando Pastoral Region’s auxiliary bishop from 1998 to 2015, and archbishop emeritus Cardinal Roger Mahony.
“Every time I came to Guardian Angel church or school, everyone said to me, ‘Bishop, where’s the new church?’ ” said Wilkerson before the end of the dedication Mass. “And I would say, ‘Well, it’s coming, it’s coming.’
“But tonight, you can ask me again, and I’ll say: ‘It’s here, it’s here!’ ” Wilkerson added, drawing laughs and applause from the crowd.
Parishioner Maritza Sanchez started attending Guardian Angel 25 years ago after immigrating from Guatemala. She likens the 40-year process of building a new church to the 40 years spent by the Israelites in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.
“The people who started this project didn’t make it to this day,” said Sanchez after the Communion Rite. “But are we blessed to have made it, and today we’re here representing them.”
In his closing remarks at the Mass moments later, Father Estrada invoked the same biblical metaphor. In recognizing former pastors Father Juan Enriquez, Father Steve Guitron, and Father Rafael Lara, he recalled how when Moses was not allowed to lead his people into the Promised Land, the task fell to Joshua.
“In a sense, I feel like a Joshua,” said Estrada. “Behind me there are so many extraordinary pastors who walked with this community for almost 40 years, to whom we are so grateful for their leadership and dedication.”
By the end of the night, Chavez was fighting back tears as she left her new church for the first time. She compared those priests, together with benefactors and parish leaders, to angels whose contributions over the years had made the dream a reality.
“It felt like a dream, I was thinking, ‘Someone pinch me, tell me this is really happening,’ ” she said of the dedication Mass. “I felt the presence of God tonight. God is here in this church, and he’s here to stay.”
