DISCOVER THE MISSION; SWEAT AND PRIDE KEEP SITE THRIVING.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

Sit in the dark, silent church at Mission San Fernando, gaze into the painted face of St. Ferdinand III and you look at the same face native people and mission fathers gazed at perhaps as long as 200 years ago.

At the 17th of California's 21 missions, you also get a glimpse of history - from 1797 when a crude cross was planted on the bank of a nearby stream to an unprecedented papal visit in 1987 to the present, the landmark's 200th anniversary. About 35,000 visitors annually - more than 20,000 of them local schoolchildren - come to learn about mission life two centuries ago.

Despite its historical aura, today's church isn't the original one. The first permanent mission church was built in the early 1800s and, while it weathered ``El Ano de Los Temblores'' (The Year of the Earthquakes) in 1812 with only a collapsed roof, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake spelled doom for the structure.

``That earthquake broke the main beam, which holds up everything,'' said Monsignor Francis Weber, mission director and historian. ``The choir loft caved in. There was some sentiment involved, but it was cheaper to put up a new church than to repair the old one.''

The present church, like the original, is made of sun-dried adobe bricks. It's cared for by attentive workers who constantly touch up chipped paint, polish pews and sweep the tile floors - deserved attention after decades of neglect that began with the secularization of California's missions.

And unlike the original church, it's tightly secured against pillagers and the weather alike.

In the 1830s, after the mission had been wrenched from the hands of the friars by the Mexican government, settlers began stripping the original church and other mission buildings for building materials. Especially prized were the curved red roofing tiles. Once the roofs had been removed, the rains slowly but steadily began to dissolve the mud bricks; within a century, much of Mission San Fernando had simply melted back into the soil it came from.

In 1897, in time for the mission's 100th anniversary, the Landmark Club, a local civic group, made repairs to the Convento, the long, low building once used as a kind of hotel. But it wasn't until the 1920s, and again in the 1940s, that reconstruction efforts were undertaken in earnest.

On Sept. 7, 1941, just a day short of the mission's 144th birthday, with the church refurbished, Mass was celebrated for the first time since 1874.

Building on history

Today, a half-dozen of the mission's original 25 buildings have been rebuilt. The only original building is the Convento - where priests once lived and welcomed wayfaring guests, and where Gov. Pio Pico and his brother, Gen. Andres Pico, entertained lavishly after acquiring the mission. Decorated with reproductions of original American Indian frescoes in brilliant red and blue, it remains the largest original building in the entire chain of missions.

Today, a self-guided tour of the mission buildings includes a look into re-created workshops filled with ironwork, leather work, pottery and a loom hewn from local timber; the mayordomo's house, furnished simply with Mission-period furniture; a small museum, which tells the mission system's history and displays baskets made by local tribes; and the Archival Historical Museum, where docents tell about important religious relics on display in a library filled with books on church and California history.

A white marble statue in the garden, nearly overgrown with flower vines, memorializes Fray Fermin Lasuen, founder of Mission San Fernando, and a bronze statue outside the church depicts Fray Junipero Serra, known as the father of California's mission system.

The mission's 35-bell carrillon is part of its charm; the bells chime every 15 minutes and on the hour, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., it plays the ancient melody ``Cantico de Alba.'' And a dozen or more peafowl - showy peacocks and their less colorful hens, perhaps descendants of original mission birds - roam the mission grounds.

The mission has two showplaces: the Convento and the church itself.

Inside the Convento, Fray Lasuen's bleak room - with only an uncomfortable-looking rope bed, a writing desk and a few chairs - contrasts with the finely decorated Governor's Room, where important guests slept in a brocade-covered canopy bed, walked on soft rugs instead of cold tiles, had the use of a tiny library - and the only chairs in the mission with cushioned seats.

Other high points are the Convento's religious library, 1,760 volumes in English, Spanish, Italian, Latin and French, published from the 16th through the 19th centuries. On display are rare illuminated pages from oversize hymnals designed for use by church choir members.

In the Convento's Madonna Room, more than 200 images of the Virgin Mary - in sculpture, porcelain and paint - gaze from behind glass doors as ``Ave Marie'' plays softly in the background.

Main attraction

The centerpiece of the mission today, as it was two centuries ago, is the church. Rebuilt to original specifications, the interior walls seem to lean outward; they're 5 feet thick at the base, but only 3 feet thick at the ceiling. The subtle architectural element lifts the eye toward heaven - and to the gilded reredos, a facade installed behind the altar only a few years ago.

The baroque woodwork, carved from blocks of walnut covered with hammered gold leaf, was first installed in 1687 in the chapel attached to the Congregation of St. Philip Neri in Ezcary, Spain. For unknown reasons, the chapel was dismantled and the reredos put into storage in 1925.

There were various plans to install the gilded panels in other religious structures, but - through a grant from the William H. Hannon Foundation - they were purchased and installed at Mission San Fernando in 1991.

Although the facade is new, an important piece of the original mission church was incorporated - the much-damaged, much-restored, life-size statue of St. Ferdinand III, for whom the mission is named.

The mission, which has played a role in dozens of movies and television shows, has served as a backdrop for everything from fashion photo shoots to an episode of the TV western ``Gunsmoke.''

But the mission church's most heart-tugging appearance may have been during the 1960s in Jack Webb's ``Dragnet,'' when Detective Joe Friday is called to the mission by a priest who discovers the figure of the baby Jesus has been stolen from the altar's nativity scene on Christmas Eve morning. After a day of frantic but fruitless investigation, the detective returns empty-handed to the misson minutes before the Christmas Eve service is scheduled to start to tell the priest the statue cannot be found.

Just then, the front door of the church opens and down the center aisle

trudges a tiny boy pulling a red wagon; in the wagon is the statue of the baby Jesus. He prayed for a wagon for Christmas, he explains, and when his wish was granted, he carried out his promise - to give the baby Jesus the first ride in the wagon.

A high point in the mission's history was the September 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II, the first pope ever to visit a California mission. Thousands of residents turned out to cheer the pope's arrival; the pontiff met privately at the mission with 320 Catholic bishops, lecturing them on their role as standard bearers for their congregations.

The pope also blessed the graves of more than 2,400 Indians buried in the tiny mission cemetery between 1797 and 1840. As he re-entered the church through the side door from the cemetery, he looked up, saw the special mosaic that had been placed there in his honor, and smiled.

The tile picture depicts Pope John Paul II pronouncing a blessing as Fray Junipero Serra stands by. At Serra's feet lies a Sheltie dog - smallPAXweber, until his death in 1990 the constant companion of Monsignor Weber and the last of the Shelties descended from the mission's sheepherding dogs.

Every old building has its secrets and its myths, and Mission San Fernando is no exception. Tales are told of a room haunted by the spirit of an old monk who died under suspicious circumstances, and there are still people who believe the walls of the Convento or the earth under the church contain gold hidden by the original mission fathers.

Monsignor Weber, who served at the mission from 1962 to 1972 and again from 1981 to the present, discounts the tall tales. ``If there was any gold around here, I would have found it long ago,'' he joked.

(San Fernando Mission Church)

San Fernando Mission Church, at 15151 San Fernando Mission Blvd., Mission Hills, offers Sunday Masses at 9 and 10:30 a.m.; daily Mass is celebrated in the small Serra Chapel at 7:25 a.m.

Self-guided tours of the mission and its museum are available from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily except Christmas and Thanksgiving; admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors and children 7-15.

Tours of the Archival Historical Museum are offered from 1 to 3 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays for no additional charge.

For more information, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Box

Photo: (1) Children get a large dose of history at Mission San Fernando, founded in 1797 and the 17th of California's 21 missions. A half-dozen of the original 25 structures have been rebuilt.

(2) Pope John Paul II's 1987 visit is commemorated on the chapel wall.

(3) A self-guided tour leads mission visitors past re-created workshops like those that sustained the site's early inhabitants.

(4) The thick-walled adobe construction keeps mission buildings cool.

(5) One of the many statues on the San Fernando Mission grounds.

(6--Cover--Color) Mission San Fernando; Walk in the footsteps of friars at historic house of faith

Photos by David R. Crane

Box: (San Fernando Mission Church) (See text)