Nearly five years after being christened as the new spiritual center for the Roman Catholic Church in Orange County, the Christ Cathedral campus in Garden Grove continues to evolve – including with the expansion of an outdoor worship space held dear by the Catholic Vietnamese community.
Already the Our Lady of La Vang shrine has become a centerpiece of many events at the cathedral campus and soon an accompanying Marian Gardens with art from around the world will be ready. Some of those overseeing the project recently returned from visiting artisans in Peru who are at work on some of the pieces that will be displayed.
The project is being led by the Our Lady of La Vang Foundation, a nonprofit group born out of a collaboration of church and community leaders that has worked with the diocese on the two-phase project that started with the construction of the shrine to Our Lady of La Vang – an apparition of the Virgin Mary that’s said to have appeared to persecuted Catholics in a rainforest in Vietnam in 1798 and delivered messages of love and comfort to them.
Dedicated in 2021, the outdoor shrine features a 12-foot tall statue of the apparition set against a backdrop representing a Vietnamese rainforest.
The second phase will feature a digital library, a mini Garden of Gethsemane, a wall honoring Catholics who were martyred in Vietnam, and the Marian Gardens representing the four mysteries of the rosary. All elements are located near the existing shrine and are set to be publicly unveiled in late May, organizers said.
The foundation has raised more than $17 million to help bring those ideas to fruition, said its Chief Executive Officer Elysabeth Nguyen.
The gardens will feature four niches containing artwork and symbols that tell the life story of the Virgin Mary through items imported from Italy, Vietnam, Missouri and Peru.
“We hope that through experiencing the garden and attending Masses at the shrine that people will become interested in our blessed…
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