An interior rendering view. April 2023.
The beautiful main altar is of polished Botticino Marble with the top made of Carrara White Marble. The Chi-Rho is of Rosso Laguna Marble – the same stone used for the Main Altar at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and under the talented craftmanship of David Carnavale of Carnavale & Lohr.
The tabernacle was commissioned by Bob and Dolores Hope for a side chapel at St. Charles Borromeo church in North Hollywood many decades ago. A gift from St. Charles Borromeo Parish.
The new church comfortably accomodates over 1,030 people with Sawn Red Oak Wood species pews and chairs fabricated by Norberto Gutierrez of The Wood and Iron Factory, Inc. The clean design of pews and chairs is similar to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, a project seating over 3,000 that Norberto completed in 2002.
The fourteen stations of the cross adorning the walls of our new church are from the 18th century and of Italian or Spanish origin. The collection was a gift from Mr. Terrence Cooney.
Upon a visual inspection by our construction team, no identifiable artist markings or branding were found. However, the stations' advanced age was confirmed, and it was clear they required expert restoration. Maria Szopinski, a highly skilled local artist with extensive experience in restoration, was commissioned for the task. To ensure an authentic restoration, researched similar stations from the same time period. With no artist identification to go on, we turned to image recognition technology and discovered an identical cast set of stations. The stations are in a 12th-century Romanesque church in Loctudy, France: Église Saint-Tudy de Loctudy. Though painted differently, these stations share the same cast, making it highly likely they were created by the same artisan.
Depicting a traditional image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the five-and-a-half feet by three-and-three-quarter foot mosaic is composed of thousands tiles of gold and a vibrant assortment of smalti tile, opaque glass first used in works created during the time of the Byzantine Empire
From Atelier Lenarduzzi Mosaici, located in Pordenone, Italy, the mosaic of our beautiful Mother was commissioned by Bill and Helen Close for installation at the new church. The rendering below shows the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe decorated with colorful artisan tile, to be installed at a future date.
A rendering of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine at Guardian Angel