When plans to renovate St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Huntington Beach were being discussed several years ago, Fr. Joe Knerr, St. Bonaventure’s pastor at the time, wanted to include the Vietnamese community in the planning process.
FR. ANGELOS SEBASTIAN BLESSES THE OUR LADY OF LA VANG SHRINE ON APRIL 12 IN THE COURTYARD OF ST. BONAVENTURE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN HUNTINGTON BEACH.
The most meaningful way of honoring the Vietnamese culture and Catholics’ devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was to replicate the Our Lady of La Vang Shrine at Christ Cathedral.
Guided by faith, the plan came into fruition when the Our Lady of La Vang Shrine was unveiled and blessed at an April 12 ceremony in the courtyard adjacent to the church.
A CROWD GATHERS ON APRIL 12 FOR A SPECIAL BLESSING AND DEDICATION OF THE NEWLY INSTALLED OUR LADY OF LA VANG SHRINE LOCATED IN THE COURTYARD ADJACENT TO THE ST. BONAVENTURE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN HUNTINGTON BEACH.
Prior to blessing the outdoor shrine, Very Rev. Angelos Sebastian, Vicar General and Moderator of Curia of the Diocese of Orange, celebrated Mass with Rev. Vincent Pham, St. Bonaventure’s current pastor.
Following Mass, a crowd gathered in the courtyard to witness the unveiling and blessing of the shrine.
“This shrine will remind us of the close ties of Mary to Christ and his Church,” Fr. Angelos said. “And it will serve as a testament to the remarkable journey of the Vietnamese American people from war and persecution to a new reality where faith and community are vibrant and ascendant.”
The shrine’s centerpiece is a 12-foot-tall statue of the Blessed Mother standing on a cloud, holding the Baby Jesus.
She has a Eurasian face and wears a traditional Vietnamese áo dài dress and khăn đống hat which portrays her as a queen dressed in Vietnamese women’s clothing.
The statue is made of the same Italian marble used to construct the Marian shrine at Christ Cathedral that was unveiled in a July 2021 ceremony before a gathering of 8,000 worshipers.
“It’s made from the best marble in Italy,” Fr. Pham said. “That’s what the Diocese got, and we said, we’re going to go with that same model.”
Andrea Ceccarelli of the Italian Marble Company, the same artist who sculpted the 12-foot-tall Our Lady of La Vang statue at Christ Cathedral, spent four months completing the St. Bonaventure statue, which stands 6-feet tall and weighs about 2,000 pounds. Additional landscaping and benches will be added in the coming weeks.
The Blessed Mother is believed to have appeared before a group of persecuted Vietnamese Catholics in a rainforest of Vietnam in 1798.
Since then, the Marian apparition has represented faith, hope and promise to Vietnamese Catholics around the world.
“It means a lot, spiritually,” said Fr. Pham on the presence of the shrine. “Our Lady of La Vang has a great connection with the history of persecution of Catholics and non-Catholics. At home we have our earthly mother, but in heaven now she is our spiritual mother, heavenly mother, who is here with us. And every time that we have challenges, we have difficulties in life, suffering, we need to tell somebody and the first person that we want to tell is mom. So, she is like a mother figure on earth for us.”
The architect who designed the shrine is Vincent Dinh.
The project was scheduled to get underway about five years ago but was interrupted by the pandemic and put on hold until Fr. Pham joined the parish in July 2023.
Construction took six months to complete and the entire $125,000 cost to build the shrine was funded by parishioners.
Thanh Van has been a member of the St. Bonaventure parish for 26 years and was among several volunteers who helped served brunch following the blessing.
“I feel very proud that our Vietnamese community is able to have this done very early,” Van said. “Since our new pastor Vincent Ho Pham came, he put a lot of work in it with the Vietnamese council to finish it very fast.”