Cathedrals Old and New

The Catholic Thing · Aug 9, 2026 · 6m

By K.E. Colombini On a trip back home to Southern California, I had the opportunity to visit the church of my baptism, my "mother church," as they say. When I became Catholic at the age of twelve, in April 1976, Holy Family, in the city of Orange, had just the previous month become the cathedral for the new diocese south of Los Angeles. Not much seemed different with the passing of nearly half a century, yet the evolution of the cathedral for the Diocese of Orange in the intervening years is itself an interesting story. There was nothing spectacular about Holy Family, which was built in the…