In the nave of the nearly finished Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony proclaims the man with silvery hair "a miracle worker."
The man, who appears to be a construction foreman, has just informed the cardinal that, per his request, the window-washing scaffolding will be coming down today. The man smiles shyly at the delight this information elicits, nods and turns away.
"Finally," says the cardinal, standing in front of the burgundy marble altar he designed himself, flanked by a 10-foot-tall tapestried procession of saints and blesseds. "Now, I can get some decent pictures."
Cathedral doors--A graphic Wednesday in Section A and the "Surroundings" story Thursday in the California section gave inconsistent and incorrect information about the weight of the main doors at the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The Great Bronze Doors comprise the doors themselves, which weigh about 7 tons apiece, plus the crowning tympanum structure and statue of Mary. The combined weight of the entire piece is about 25 tons. In addition, the story Wednesday that the graphic accompanied gave misleading information about the dimensions of the nave's series of tapestries. They are 20 feet tall.
For six years, Mahony has photographed the hillside property along Temple Street, where, from the riven asphalt of a parking lot, this city's new cathedral has bloomed. Forty albums worth of pictures has he, but as of yet no final portrait. A few days ago, at sunset, he took some wonderful photos of the campanile, but a lattice of window-washing rigs had long marred the cathedral's face. Now the cardinal will at last be able to take the first "postcard" shots.
Controversy has swirled around the project ever since Mahony announced in 1995 that instead of repairing the earthquake-damaged St. Vibiana's Cathedral, he would build a new one. There is controversy still, but now there is also a cathedral.
And as the cardinal guides a reporter on a tour of the project that has consumed him, and many others, for the last five years, his vision of it as a place apart rises all around. Within its tawny walls, the outside world not so much recedes as is reduced--to an essence of silence and light and stone in which there is room for the miraculous and the mundane.
"It is just beyond belief," says Mahony mid-tour. He looks up at the luminous patchwork of alabaster windowpanes that gives form to the cross behind the altar, and the river of information and exclamation that flows so easily from him lies quiet.
"I dreamed of how it would look," he says, still gazing upward. "But I never thought it could be so beautiful."
On this day, with just 10 left until the dedication, the cathedral is still crawling with workers. They sit on the steps, talking on cell phones, sipping coffee from Burger King. One man straddles the top of one of the enormous front doors, tinkering with something or other.
The whine and stutter of power tools from inside bounce out into the early morning, blurred by echo into a sound like whales singing.
