Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano

The mission site was originally consecrated on October 30, 1775 by Fermín Lasuén of Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo under the name La Misión de San Juan Capistrano de Sajavit, but was abandoned within a week after unrest in San Diego forced the small founding party to retreat. Father Junípero Serra, with Fr. Gregório Amúrrio and Fr. Pablo de Mugártegui and a guard of eleven soldiers, returned to the site on October 30–31, 1776; Serra celebrated a High Mass of thanksgiving on November 1, 1776, the date celebrated ever since as the official founding of the seventh of the 21 California missions. The mission was relocated within its first months to a spot about three miles west, less than 60 yards from the Acjachemen (Juaneño) village of Acjacheme, between the Trabuco and San Juan creeks. Fr. Amúrrio performed the mission's first baptism on December 19, 1776; the first Indian marriage was blessed by Mugártegui on January 23, 1777. A modest adobe capilla was blessed in 1778 and replaced in 1782 by the stone-and-adobe church now known as the Serra Chapel, which is the oldest standing building in California still in use and the only extant structure in which Serra is documented to have celebrated Mass. The ambitious Great Stone Church, begun in 1797, was six years in the building and collapsed in the December 8, 1812 (Feast of the Immaculate Conception) earthquake while the parish was at Mass, killing 40 native worshipers and two boys ringing the bells in the tower, who were buried in the Mission cemetery. The mission was secularized by the Mexican government in 1833, and in 1845 Governor Pío Pico sold it at auction to his brother-in-law John Forster, who held it as a private ranch for the next 20 years. After the Forster period the parish lacked a permanent pastor and the buildings decayed. Fr. St. John O'Sullivan arrived in 1910 to recover from a stroke and tuberculosis and rebuilt the Mission a section at a time, repairing the Serra Chapel roof with sycamore logs and having Los Angeles architect Arthur B. Benton strengthen the chapel walls with masonry buttresses. The Mission was given full parochial status in 1918, with O'Sullivan as its first modern pastor; he died in 1933 and is interred in the Mission cemetery (campo santo). Successor pastors Arthur J. Hutchinson, Monsignor Vincent Lloyd-Russell and Monsignor Paul M. Martin continued the preservation work, and in 1937 the Historic American Buildings Survey photographed the site. Monsignor Martin oversaw comprehensive preservation work following the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. The Serra Chapel's spectacular Baroque retablo, hand-carved of 396 pieces of cherry wood and gold-leafed in Barcelona roughly 400 years ago, was donated by Archbishop John Joseph Cantwell and installed in the chapel in the early 1920s. A new parish church, modeled on the lost Great Stone Church but using modern earthquake-resistant materials and two-foot-thick walls, was championed by Fr. Paul Martin and funded through pledge drives and donations from mission visitors beginning around 1981. The first Mass in the new building was offered on Christmas 1984; construction was completed in 1986 and the first full Mass was celebrated October 23, 1986. Cardinal Timothy Manning officially dedicated the church on February 8, 1987, and in the Jubilee Year 2000 Pope John Paul II proclaimed it a minor basilica. On March 19, 2003, the Feast of St. Joseph, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops designated Mission San Juan Capistrano a National Shrine in recognition of its service to pilgrims from across the United States and abroad.