Angelus News | July 31-August 7, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 21

From left: Mission Basilica San Buenaventura pastor Father Tom Elewaut, Deacon Teodoro Landeros, Bishop Robert Barron, and Archbishop José H.
Gomez during the July 15 Mass celebrating the mission's papal designation as a minor basilica.
COLTON MACHADO/ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES
lenges was separating fact from fiction
about San Buenaventura. He diligently
sought out citations to back up
statements that had been made about
the mission’s history over the years.
His research complete, in 2018,
the application was submitted to the
Congregation for Divine Worship and
the Discipline of the Sacraments in
Rome.
Yet it seemed that history was fated
to repeat itself. Later that same year,
the application came back rejected —
again.
In its denial, the Vatican cited what
Father Elewaut described as a pair of
liturgical “faux pas” that he had made
to accommodate the building’s limited
space. He had placed the baptismal
font in the sanctuary, “a liturgical
no-no” for Rome, as he put it. Also
frowned upon by Rome was his positioning
of the presider’s chair in front
of the altar, instead of off to the side.
Father Elewaut dutifully made the
required changes and sent a new
application to Rome. On June 30,
the vigil of St. Junípero’s feast day, he
received the news he’d spent years
praying to the saint for.
Father Elewaut credits Archbishop
Gomez for helping him persevere
during the long process.
Archbishop Gomez has often expressed
a deep devotion to St. Junípero,
and was instrumental in pushing
for his canonization, something Pope
Francis obliged in 2015, celebrating
the saint’s canonization Mass on the
steps of the Basilica of the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
in Washington, D.C.
“He’s been very encouraging and
supportive all the way through,” Father
Elewaut said of the archbishop. “Even
when I thought ‘Well, if we don’t
receive it, at least we put our best foot
forward.’ He’d always say, ‘We’re going
to get it, we’re going to get it, you just
wait.’ ”
WHAT CHANGES NOW?
In making a church a basilica, the
pope declares the church to be one of
his own.
There are just over 1,800 minor basilicas
in the world, and before the July
15 announcement, 87 in the whole
United States, and six in the state of
California.
For Bishop Barron, the announcement
had a special significance. Five
years ago, two months after St. Junipero’s
canonization, he was installed as
episcopal vicar for the Santa Barbara
region of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
in a Mass celebrated at Mission
San Buenaventura.
In an interview with Angelus, he said
basilicas are a potent symbol of the
Church’s universality.
The designation, Bishop Barron
explained, binds San Buenaventura to
the four major basilicas of the mother
Church in Rome: St. John Lateran,
St. Peter, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul
Outside the Walls.
“It’s a way of linking churches spread
all over the world to the pope,” he
said, adding, “We put strength in diversity
today, which is great, but we can
sometimes overlook the importance
of unity, what brings us all together as
one community, despite our massive
differences in language and culture.”
Now that Mission San Buenaventura
is a basilica, it will receive a series of
symbolic “upgrades”: a cone-shaped
canopy, known as an “ombrellino,”
will now be placed above the church’s
lectern; a bell mounted on a pole,
known as the “tintinnabulum,” similar
to that used during the Middle Ages to
22 • ANGELUS • July 31-August 7, 2020