[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

A close second to that scandal was Mahony's determination that a new cathedral should be built on his watch and the manner in which he went about it. Many Catholics, concerned about the great suffering among the archdiocese's faithful, felt money shouldn't be spent on a vanity project. Critics of a new building suggested that the church of St Vincent de Paul (1925), W Adams at Figueroa, funded by the Dohenys, would do very well as a cathedral (this is actually what the Dohenys had hoped for). St Basil's church (criticized as a "monument to opulence" by the Chicano Movement when built in 1969), on the Wilshire site of Cantwell's failed cathedral project, was also a candidate, but Mahony insisted on staying near his Civic Center power base (although he did flirt briefly with the idea of tearing down the UNOCAL building for a cathedral site) and refused to reuse any existing building. He wanted St Vib's razed, replaced and renamed, but with a much larger footprint. He also refused to include Vibiana in any new cathedral complex on the block. For its part, the City Council stripped Vibiana of its landmark status. The then-mayor backed Mahony 100%. The late developer, Ira Yellin, Mahony's "project executive", wrote in support of demolition in a 1996 article in LAT,

"[St Vibiana's] has no architectural merit and relatively minor historical value... [The 1924 and 1975 remodels] destroyed its integrity and value"...
"It is time for the [Los Angeles] Conservancy to end its destructive and wasteful lawsuit"

Seven members of the Catholic Workers movement scaled the tower of St Vibiana's in 1996 to protest the $45MM budget for a new cathedral. Mahony was unmoved (the final cost was close to $190MM). Even before it was built, people began derisively referring to the new cathedral as "Taj Mahony" or "Rog Mahal". That's never stopped.

In yet another slap in the face of Los Angeles, the new Los Angeles Cathedral was designed by an architect who works and lives in SPAIN. They couldn't find even one architect in all of Los Angeles, California or the United States to design a church?

It never ends. Oh BTW, retired Cardinal Mahoney is now hiding in the Vatican....his last refuge from Justice.