Angelus News | September 23, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 19

The Sept. 10 jubilee year closing Mass with Archbishop Gomez was the first liturgy celebrated inside Mission San Gabriel in more than two years. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
The mission continues
Mission San Gabriel closed a historic jubilee year — and opened a
restored church — with a tribute to its past and prayers for its future.
BY PABLO KAY & NATALIE ROMANO
Two years ago, Mission San
Gabriel Arcángel was hit with
what pastor Father John Molyneux,
CMF, calls “a double punch”:
First, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
in early 2020 that kept faithful
away from the sacraments — and
one another — for months; then, a
mysterious fire that gutted the mission
church, Christianity’s oldest outpost
in what is now the Archdiocese of Los
Angeles.
But on Sept. 10, providence answered
back with a double punch of
its own: an animated conclusion to
a special jubilee year celebrating the
mission’s 250 years, and a reopening
(of sorts) of the restored church, a
gleaming tribute to the mission’s rich
artistic legacy with an assist from stateof-the-art
technology.
“I never thought it would look that
good,” said Father Molyneux after
the “Forward in Mission” Jubilee
Year closing Mass celebrated by Los
Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez.
“It was a big relief.”
It had taken $6.7 million and more
than two years of research and labor to
get to this moment. For those involved,
it was more than just a job.
“Everyone on the team is so invested
… and has put their heartfelt emotion
into it,” said Terri Huerta, director of
Mission Development and Communications,
days before the Mass. “We
really brought back the humility of
what is Mission San Gabriel and its
beginnings. … I hope the public can
see it, feel it.”
The public got its first opportunity
to do so on a muggy Saturday morning
in San Gabriel, at the tail end of
a rare September rainstorm hitting
Southern California.
14 • ANGELUS • September 23, 2022