Garden Grove (VanHoaNBLV) -- Thousands of
Catholic worshippers have participated in the first mass at
Christ Cathedral (formerly called the
Crystal Cathedral) on 29 June
2013 at 12141 S
Lewis St,
Garden Grove, California,
U.S.A.
The celebration was particularly colorful as many of the worshippers came in their native dresses, which bespeaks the great ethnic variety of southern
California.
The mass was officiated by the
Most Reverend Kevin W. Vann, the new bishop of
Orange Diocese, together with a number of assistant priests who helped celebrate the event in three languages:
English,
Spanish and
Vietnamese.
Psalms and dances from three different traditions illustrated the richness of and the harmony among the three groups of celebrants. Some participants were moved to tears seeing such splendid display of vibrant cultures.
The Orange Diocese used to have a main cathedral in
Orange, CA, which has been outgrown by its Catholic population. That is why the bishopric has had to buy the Crystal Cathedral from its original builders at the price of 57.5 million dollars in
February 2012. The whole site covers
40 acres and its celebrated cathedral consists of 10,
000 separate panels of crystal.
This unique construction was the work of
American architect Philip Johnson who drafted the original plan and the
Protestant church under the leadership of
Pastor Robert H. Schuller completed its edification in
1981. The building can accommodate 2,736 seats, it possesses the fifth largest organ in the world, and a sky-scraping tower that cuts into the blue sky of southern California, drawing thousands and thousands of visitors to
Garden Grove, CA.
At present, the Christ parish is led by the
Reverend Father Christopher H. Smith as the pastor and a number of assistant priests, who serve a tri-ethnic population consisting of mainstream
Americans, Hispanics and Vietnamese.
Inside sources reveal that it is not easy to keep cleaning ten thousand panels of glass around the clock, or tuning a grand organ of the kind that belongs there. It often happens that the instrument does not quite produce the right notes because some parts may have rusted. If one sends it to
Italy where it was originally constructed it will cost over two million each time. To bring the tuners from Italy, it was discovered, would cost only between
250,000 and
300,000 dollars, room and board included.
As far as the Vietnamese congregation is concerned, on 30 June 2013, the Most Reverend Dominic M. Luong,
D.D.,
M.S.,
Auxiliary Bishop of the Orange Diocese, told VanHoaNBLV that Orange Diocese is one of the ten largest congregations of
American Catholicism, with a population of 1.3 million followers belonging to 56 parishes. The ethnic groups with the largest numbers of followers are Hispanics, mainstream Americans, Vietnamese and
Filipinos. The Vietnamese congregation includes nearly 70,000 souls divided in 14 communities in the whole Diocese.
- published: 15 Jul 2013
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