Church elects replacement bishop

St. Francis by the Sea in Laguna Beach. (File photo)

Flanked by officiants of the Ecumenical Catholic Church and local parishioners, activists seeking to reopen the shuttered St. Francis by the Sea church met Friday to elect an executive board and appoint an auxiliary bishop to again open the historic church’s doors to public services.

Paul Merritt was elected president, William Kelly vice president, and Jessica De Stefano secretary-treasurer. Named auxiliary bishop was Bishop Peter Hickman, who serves as presiding bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion and pastor at St. Matthew Ecumenical Catholic Church in Orange. The unanimous vote was cast by 33 congregants, 32 of them by proxy.

“Now we are in a solid position to regain the church for the congregants,” Merritt said.

The tiny facility at 430 Park Ave., Laguna Beach, built from rubble gathered from the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, is occupied by a parish of the American Catholic Church in California, a liberal wing of Catholicism that permits priests to marry and inducts women as pastors and bishops.

The cathedral itself is nestled among buildings at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and was designed by a former Episcopal priest, Percy Wise Clarkson, combining elements of Byzantine, Gothic and Craftsman styles, according to local historian Anne Frank, who petitioned to have the structure placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1980s. It is one of two sites on the National Register in Laguna Beach; the other is Rockledge, the sprawling ocean-view complex built in the 1920s.

–Cindy Frazier, @CindyFrazier1, Coastline Pilot

…Continue reading “Church elects replacement bishop”