Sacramento and the Catholic Church: Shaping a Capital City

Introduction

At the corner of Eleventh and k streets in Sacramento, California, stands the stately Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Renovated and retrofitted in 2005, the cathedral buzzes with life every noon as a spectrum of worshipers—from street people to state officials—“catch mass” or confess their sins in the oak confessionals at the rear of the church. On Saturdays, wedding couples are often photographed before the terra-cotta-faced presbytery. The sunny plaza in front of the cathedral fills with hundreds of Latino/a Sacramentans who arrive at ora mexicana for the 1:00 pm Sunday Spanish mass. As one strolls south on Eleventh Street from the cathedral, the church’s sphere of influence remains strong as one passes the bronze statue of Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop Alphonse Gallegos. It was erected by the community to honor the late prelate, tragically killed on a dark California highway in 1991. After passing the Gallegos memorial, one leaves the penumbra of the cathedral and enters the outer ring of the state capitol . Here, smartly attired legislators, lobbyists, and state workers sporting Introduction 1 their picture ids head through manicured Capitol Park into the statehouse to transact the business of the largest state in the American Union and the fifth-largest economy in the world. Caught up in the “chaos of intentions” that is the American city, few probably take time to see the influence of religion on Sacramento’s physical and human landscape.1 It might never occur to those who regularly worship at the cathedral or do business at the capitol (often one and the same person) that the cathedral, once the largest west of the Rocky Mountains, was deliberately placed one block north of the capitol by a Catholic bishop anxious to help Sacramento realize its dreams of urban glory. Nor would they know that a bishop in the twentieth century contemplated selling the great cathedral to urban developers. Attorneys, bail bondsmen, and others involved in the justice system may never wonder why a parking lot near their offices on Eighth and g streets is named for St. Joseph. Only a few aging Sacramentans remember that a large convent, academy, and grade school once stood on this block and trained a number of Sacramento’s early schoolteachers. Sacramento children who attend Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School on Martin Luther King Boulevard may not know that the school is named for a Catholic priest who was a respected leader in the Latino/a community until his death in 1983. Religion is not totally invisible in the California capital, but its presence is for many like the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of Sacramento—and other cities of the American West—there is more going on than meets the eye. In fact, I argue that the Catholic Church has had an important influence on Sacramento’s life and development. Conversely , Sacramento’s distinct social, cultural, and economic conditions have affected the character of Catholic life in the city. This book examines the interplay between the city of Sacramento, California, and the Catholic Church from the city’s beginnings to the twenty-first century, to illustrate the sometimes hidden ways religious communities help form and sustain urban communities. The Sacramento metropolitan area, according to adjusted 2003 U.S. Census figures, has nearly two million people and is today the twentysixth -largest population center in the United States. The city itself is the thirty-seventh largest in the United States and the seventh largest in California . It is also one of the most culturally diverse communities in Amer2 s a c r a m e n t o a n d t h e c at h o l i c c h u r c h i n t r o d u c t i o n 3 ica.2 In its origins and development, the city is a microcosm of urban development in California and in the American West. Sacramento’s past is ripe for serious treatment by historians.3 Sacramento was an “instant city” created by one of the mining rushes that gave birth to cities all over the American West.4 Many of these boomtowns faded into oblivion or became quaint tourist attractions once their precious metals or minerals were played out. Others, like Sacramento, found ways to reinvent themselves and became important urban centers. Sacramento’s survival was the result of...