CATHEDRAL FIGHT PITS RIGHTS OF CHURCH AGAINST CITY LAW.

Byline: Anne Burke Daily News Staff Writer

On Dec. 17, 1994, Cardinal Roger Mahony invited several leaders of the Los Angeles Conservancy to meet with him in the rectory of the quake-damaged St. Vibiana's Cathedral.

Seated at the head of a table in a dining room rimmed with portraits of Catholic bishops, Mahony announced that, after much thought and prayer, he had envisioned a magnificent new cathedral for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The new $45 million church, conference center and rectory, Mahony told the architectural preservationists, would befit the nation's largest archdiocese, which has nearly 4 million Roman Catholics in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

But it would not include St. Vibiana's, which was erected in 1876 when Los Angeles was a dusty frontier town of 9,000. The old cathedral - a city historical monument since 1963 - would have to be torn down, the cardinal announced.

Eighteen months later, the conservancy is locked in a bitter battle to stop Mahony from razing St. Vibiana's.

On one side are the archdiocese and much of the entire city bureaucracy - including the City Council, which has indicated that it is willing to overturn regulations that protect historic landmarks in order to revitalize the central city.

St. Vibiana's is located downtown on Second and Main streets, on the edge of Skid Row.

Reasoning that it is better to preserve the entire area than a single building, the City Council has indicated that it will strip St. Vibiana's of its historic landmark status if that's what's necessary to keep the new cathedral downtown.

On the other side is the conservancy, which says St. Vibiana's is an important historic landmark that could be incorporated in any new cathedral design, and the city's Cultural Heritage Commission, which last week refused the council's request to remove the cathedral's landmark status.

The fight, church leaders angrily allege, challenges the constitutional right of the archdiocese to the free exercise of religion and usurps the authority granted to the church ``by the grace of God'' to do what it wants with the cathedral.

Conservancy officials insist they are merely trying to make sure that the archdiocese abides by the law.

``It somewhat raises the question, does the church believe that it's an entity unto itself, that it's not accountable to the laws or the public process of our city?'' asked Linda Dishman, executive director of the 5,000-member conservancy, an 18-year-old group dedicated to preserving Los Angeles' architectural heritage.

On June 1, the archdiocese started to dismantle the 83-foot-tall bell tower at St. Vibiana's without a demolition permit or environmental review, both of which the conservancy and Superior Court Judge Robert H. O'Brien insist church officials should have obtained first.

According to archdiocesan attorney John McNicholas, church officials believed that, because the bell tower posed an imminent hazard, they did not need a demolition permit - just the abatement order that the city had issued.

They also say the church has a right to demolish the bell tower under the 1993 Religious Freedom Exercise Restoration Act, which provides that ``government shall not burden a person's exercise of religion,'' McNicholas said.

But on Wednesday, Judge O'Brien, ruling on a lawsuit filed by the conservancy, granted a preliminary injunction barring further dismantling of St. Vibiana's until a demolition permit is obtained and environmental review completed.

According to archdiocesan officials, that could take many months. There are now questions about whether Mahony will build the new cathedral out of downtown - even in another city or county, as he has threatened to do if he does not have assurances by his self-imposed deadline of July 15 that he will be able to raze St. Vibiana's.

During the 1994 meeting in the rectory, Mahony gave conservancy members a history lesson he delivered many times before and since.

He told them that the demolition of St. Vibiana's was approved in 1904, by Pope Pius X. Even then, the Catholic Church deemed St. Vibiana's woefully inadequate for the needs of an aspiring metropolis.

In the years since, one Los Angeles bishop after another ran into obstacles trying to build a new cathedral. History intervened with World War I, then the death of a bishop, then the need for new parish churches during Southern California's post-World War II population boom.

Mahony, it appeared to the conservancy members, wanted to be the one to finally tear down St. Vibiana's and fulfill the dream for a new cathedral.

``That was definitely the sense,'' recalled conservancy President Kathryn Welch Howe. ``He felt the time was right. He felt he could do it.''

Church officials have stated that the Northridge Earthquake of January 1994 caused ``catastrophic damage'' to St. Vibiana's.

The conservancy counters that the cathedral remained open and in full use for weddings, funerals and other gatherings - including a Palm Sunday Mass attended by President Clinton - for more than 16 months after the temblor.

The chief spokesman for the archdiocese, the Rev. Gregory Coiro, said the cathedral remained open because church officials initially were not aware of the extent of the damage.

After a May 1995 engineer's report pointed out that the cathedral was dangerous, Mahony immediately closed it, Coiro said.

The city never inspected St. Vibiana's for damage after the Northridge Quake, nor did it yellow- or red-tag the structure at that time, according to city officials.

The first city inspection came May 30 of this year. On June 4, three days after the archdiocese starting tearing down the bell tower, the entire cathedral was red-tagged, the city states.

On Friday, May 31, Nabih Youssef, structural engineer for the archdiocese, told Richard Holguin, chief of the engineering bureau for the city Building and Safety Department, that as a result of a 3.5-magnitude quake May 23, damage to St. Vibiana's had ``drastically increased'' and the cathedral and bell tower represented an imminent hazard.

That day, Holguin conducted a 10-minute visual inspection of the exterior of the bell tower and issued an abatement order for it. The order stated that the bell tower was damaged so badly that it was in imminent danger of falling over.

According to Holguin's testimony in a deposition taken by the conservancy, he was not aware during the inspection that the tower had been seismically retrofitted in 1987 and 1988 after the Whittier Earthquake, or that the dome had been reinforced in 1975 after the Sylmar temblor.

Michael Krakower, the conservancy's structural engineer and the designer of seismic retrofit work for the bell tower in 1987 and 1988, said in a lawsuit declaration that he found no evidence of structural damage to the tower, and that it was not an imminent hazard.

Krakower also said two cracks on the south side of the tower, singled out by Youssef as new cracks that worried Building and Safety inspectors, existed in 1995.

In his preliminary injunction, O'Brien agreed with the conservancy that the bell tower was not an imminent hazard.

Conservancy attorney Jack H. Rubens maintains that the archdiocese exaggerated the danger of the bell tower to ease the way for demolition.

Noting that the archdiocese assembled a demolition crew on the site between Friday night and sunrise Saturday, Rubens said he believes the demolition of the bell tower was timed for a weekend morning to avoid interference from preservationists.

Coiro denies the accusation.

With three massive cranes in the parking lot, ``that's hardly covert, surreptitious activity,'' Coiro said.

McNicholas added that the conservancy is wrong in its assessment of the bell tower.

``It's easy for (Rubens) to make these statements because neither he nor his organization has any accountability. If someone is injured as a result of some condition of the building, is the conservancy going to step forward and pay compensation to that individual?'' McNicholas said.

Shortly before 5 p.m. that day, Holguin issued an abatement order for the bell tower. The order stated that the bell tower was damaged so badly that it was in imminent danger of falling over.

The order required the archdiocese to submit a plan within 72 hours outlining a course of action but did not authorize demolition.

In the conservancy deposition, Holguin stated that he told three archdiocesan representatives that they would need a demolition permit before starting to tear down the cathedral, said conservancy attorney Richard L. Stone.

McNicholas countered that the archdiocese was initially told by someone with the city that it did not need a demolition permit for the bell tower because the structure posed a public danger. He said he did not know the individuals involved.

When church officials received the abatement order May 31, they believed that it authorized them to tear down the bell tower as a means of removing the ``imminent threat,'' McNicholas added.

About 8 a.m. Saturday, June 1, Rubens heard about a TV news broadcast stating that the archdiocese intended to start the demolition of St. Vibiana's right away, according to conservancy court papers.

He said he later learned from Holguin that the archdiocese had not obtained a demolition permit, but planned to apply for one Monday, June 4, according to the court records.

Rubens called City Hall, urging the Building and Safety Department to send an inspector to the site, then hurried to St. Vibiana's himself, according to the record.

At 11:18 a.m., Rubens said, a crane removed the cross at the top of the bell tower. About 11:30 a.m., a crane began to remove the cupola at the top of the bell tower, the records state.

About that time a city building inspector who Rubens said was aware that the archdiocese needed but did not have a demolition permit, arrived at St. Vibiana's. According to Rubens, the building inspector did not immediately stop the removal of the cupola.

A call to the building inspector Friday was not answered.

By 12:35 p.m., the cupola was lowered onto the parking lot. Meanwhile, workers removed items from the interior, including ornamented wood door frames, court papers state.

Later that afternoon, the conservancy sought and obtained a temporary, oral restraining order from Judge Diane Wayne, blocking further demolition or the issuance of a demolition order, until a hearing June 3.

Rubens said the conservancy's first intent in seeking to block demolition in court was that the archdiocese comply with the law. Beyond that, the conservancy hopes that part or all of St. Vibiana's will remain standing.

Archdiocesan officials have said they are not willing to even discuss that option. St. Vibiana's, they maintain, would be too costly to repair - $20 million for an extensive rebuilding. The conservancy estimates a less extensive repair job at $4.6 million.

In addition, foundations that have donated money for the new cathedral did so on the condition that it not be used to repair St. Vibiana's, the church states.

What the conservancy does not know is how the old cathedral would be incorporated into the new.

``We basically said, let your Pritzker Prize-winning architect figure this out,'' Howe said, referring to acclaimed Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo, named this month to design the new cathedral.

Mahony is determined that he will dedicate the new cathedral in 2000. That means he must move quickly to start construction.

The cardinal has spoken publicly and passionately about his intentions to erect a new cathedral.

``Every great city in the world with a Catholic heritage has a dynamic and functional cathedral at the heart of its central core,'' Mahony wrote last year. ``Los Angeles will be no exception.''