‘So Much Joy’ : Longtime Parishioners Reminisce, Pray St. Isidore Will Not Close

For what may be the last time, the flock of St. Isidore Roman Catholic Church in Los Alamitos gathered Sunday for 9 a.m. Mass.

Inside the chapel, parishioners squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the pews and knelt on the carpeted floor of the foyer and in the aisles as they prayed that their little house of worship, which some had attended all their lives, would remain open.

Barring that, they prayed that God would give them the strength to bear seeing it close.

Side by side in a pew, Simon and Helen Salas, both 74, reminisced, at once shy and proud, about their wedding. Exactly 56 years ago to the day, the couple married in the chapel.

On Sunday, the Salases, who have lived their whole lives in Los Alamitos, celebrated their anniversary in the midst of deep uncertainty.

“Once this breaks up then everybody probably will go their own separate way,” Simon Salas said.

“I made my first Communion here,” Helen Salas said. “And all our children were baptized here,” her husband said.

St. Isidore’s future is in peril for several reasons, the most serious of which is financial.

The Diocese of Orange has determined that the foundation of the mission-style church requires earthquake retrofitting, at a cost of as much as $300,000--an expense that diocesan officials say is too great.

The diocese also does not have enough Spanish-speaking priests to station one regularly at the tiny church, which can accommodate only 150 people comfortably.

By contrast, St. Hedwig Catholic Church, only a quarter-mile from St. Isidore, serves 3,089 families, has three full-time priests and already offers five services each Sunday. The diocese proposes combining the churches by adding a sixth service at 1:30 p.m. to accommodate St. Isidore worshipers. Currently, services at St. Hedwig are in English.

But some say they won’t feel as comfortable praying at St. Hedwig.

Gray-haired men in their 70s remember when they were altar boys at St. Isidore. Grandparents have seen their children and grandchildren baptized in its small chapel.

Simon Salas finds it difficult to believe the church will close. And he doesn’t believe an earthquake could ever destroy it.

The church has survived so many upheavals before.

Fieldworkers built the church in 1922 on donated land. After the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, parishioners rebuilt it with money earned in part from selling tamales.

And in the early 1960s, church officials tried to close St. Isidore and move congregants to St. Hedwig. But the community persuaded officials to reopen it in 1962.

“If it did crumble, it would take such an earthquake that everything else would be destroyed too, so then it wouldn’t matter to anyone,” Simon Salas said.

Since the diocese announced the closure, a church group called Comite del Amor, or Committee of Love, has been working to save it. On Saturday the group met for three hours with church officials but went away with no verdict.

Committee member Lorena Gallardo, 33, had hoped the church would be the center of life for her five children, the way it was for her when she was a little girl.

Seven members of her family lived within walking distance of the church; English classes there taught her parents the language of their new country. Church yard sales made clothes affordable for the family of eight, and church-sponsored field trips introduced them to Disneyland and camp.

“There was so much joy they brought us. If we needed help someone was always there,” Gallardo said.

Over the years, the church’s offerings to the community began to dwindle. Three services on Sunday fell to one, and there no longer are catechism classes for the young.

But the spirit of compassion and community still remains at St. Isidore, Gallardo said.

And it is the spirit of their religion--and not the building that houses it--that worshipers were reminded to cherish in Sunday’s sermon by Father Agustin Escovar.

In a baritone that easily filled the small room, Escovar warned that it is tempting, in times of trial, to feel let down and to pull away from God.

“But the experience of God most defines itself in moments of suffering. . . . Suffering is inevitable, and it is impossible to follow the Lord without carrying the cross,” he said.

Should the doors of St. Isidore close, Escovar urged listeners to remember that they, not the building they love, are the true houses of God’s spirit.