"It's a huge space," the cardinal says. "But it doesn't feel like an aircraft hangar."
Now he moves quickly, from one feature to another. He seems less the 64-year-old prelate explaining the themes of sacred space and more a young man enthralled with the nifty details, the gadgetry and gorgeousness of what he has wrought.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday August 30, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 106 words Type of Material: Correction
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.
Here are the hinged pews that can accommodate a wheelchair. Here, you must see these angels: candle sconces that identify which walls will be anointed in the dedication. The angels, also by De Moss, are wild as wood spirits; their wings seem to beat against the walls. Look at the figures in the tapestries--135 of them. See how some are canonized saints but others are children in tennis shoes, teenagers with untucked shirts.
"Because ordinary people are also among the blessed," says the cardinal, as if just noticing another miracle. "They are us, the ordinary people."
In front of the altar, which is deep red like a heart, a real heart, he pauses.
"I designed that altar, you know," he says. "Moneo wanted a circular pattern in the floor, and I said that's a great idea and we'll have a circular base and just a simple slab on top."
Gold angels, designed by M.L. Snowden, swirl along the base; the top is unadorned.
"There are too many altars in Los Angeles that are poor quality," Mahony says, "that have holes drilled in them for mikes, that have lost the sense and integrity of the altar. This one--even the altar cloth won't cover it completely. You will always be able to see it."
The altar was one of the first things brought into the cathedral; the walls literally rose around it. It was covered, protected, but one day the cardinal walked in to find it being used in an un-altarlike way.
"There were four guys eating lunch on it, and one guy with his blueprints and another hammering, hammering! Right on it. And I said, 'Stop!'" Then, he wrote a note thanking everyone for respecting the altar and not using it as a lunch table. He copied the note and plastered it all over the top. With his name about two inches high.
Behind the altar is another Nava tapestry that seems like a simple series of circles and geometric shapes.
"You must see this," says the cardinal, stepping toward it. It is the artist's rendition of the heavenly Jerusalem as described in the biblical book of Revelation. "And then he has overlaid a street map of Los Angeles," says Mahony, as if he still can't believe it himself. "Look, you can see our streets," he says, pointing at a series of lines that runs over the larger forms. "Is that amazing?"
