CHULA VISTA — Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Chula Vista is concluding a yearlong celebration of its 80th anniversary.
Cardinal Robert W. McElroy and two of the diocese’s auxiliary bishops will join the community on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12, at the 6 p.m. Mass.
The concelebrants will include Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Pulido; Father Giovanni Bizzotto, the Scalabrinian provincial superior; Father Bruce Orsborn, a former pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe; and other Scalabrinian priests.
Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano will preside at the 9 a.m. Mass that same day.
The parish’s anniversary celebration began last year, also on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with an opening Mass celebrated by Bishop Bejarano, who blessed a church bell to mark the occasion.
Scalabrinian Father Hily Gonzales, who has pastored the parish for over three years, delved into the past as he began preparing for the anniversary celebration in late 2023.
“I got in contact with elderly parishioners that provided us with some photos and precious information,” he said. “I went to the diocesan archive and discovered interesting information about the parish.”
Father Gonzales said that he shared his discoveries with parishioners, believing that it was important for present-day parishioners to know –– and be grateful for –– the “sacrifices” of past generations and to understand that “it is now the task of the present parishioners” to maintain what they have inherited.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish constructed its first church in 1944 at the corner of Anita and Fresno streets, under the guidance of its founding pastor, Father Vincent Cizauskas (1944-1945). The small building only had about eight pews on each side.
By the mid-1950s, with the number of parishioners increasing, it became clear that a larger church was needed. Father Jacob DeMoore, then pastor, purchased land on 4th Avenue, between Palomar and Oxford streets, on which the parishioners themselves built a new church. The new church was named Our Lady of Guadalupe, with the hope of offering more services in Spanish, but that was not realized. After much debate, that church was renamed Most Precious Blood Parish in 1957 and was dedicated in the later part of 1958.
Our Lady of Guadalupe parishioners petitioned the diocese to return to their original parish site on Anita Street to better serve the increasing number of Spanish-speaking parishioners, and a second church was built at that location. This larger church was dedicated in 1963 and designated as a Mexican National Parish in Otay. Architecturally, it is almost identical to Most Precious Blood Church, which still stands on 4th Avenue and is its own parish today.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish eventually outgrew its second church, too. The first and second churches were demolished to make way for the third and current church. Construction began under the leadership of Father Orsborn, who served as pastor from 1990 to 1996. The church was dedicated on Nov. 28, 1993.
Since 2017, the parish has been entrusted to the priests of the Missionaries of St. Charles, a religious congregation also known as the Scalabrinians. The congregation was founded in 1887 in Italy, primarily in response to the great exodus of Italians to North and South America. Today, its charism includes pastoral care for migrants, refugees, maritime workers, and others who have left their countries to work or live abroad.
“In whatever parish we take administration, we make sure that we share our charism with the parish,” Father Gonzales said.
An example of that can be seen in Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish’s decision to open a temporary migrant shelter in the parish hall.
In September 2023, the parish responded to an influx of migrants in San Ysidro by providing food for them. The next month, the parish opened an overnight shelter for 20 migrants, which operated five days a week. The parish gave them dinner, a place to take a shower, and breakfast.
“Our parishioners got involved in providing food, blankets and other personal needs of the migrants,” Father Gonzales said.
The shelter remained in operation until March 2024, after which the parish continued to package and deliver meals for another six months to migrants stranded at the San Diego airport. Father Gonzales said that, by the time it closed, the shelter had hosted 1,791 migrants of 15 different nationalities.
In 2022, in anticipation of the 80th anniversary, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish launched its “Restore My House” project. The fundraising campaign enabled the parish to complete a list of upgrades and repairs, including repainting the exterior wall of the church, restoring the doors, repairing a stained-glass depiction of Our Lady of Guadalupe that had been vandalized during the pandemic, and restoring the altarpiece “retablo” of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Father Gonzales sees good things in the parish’s future.
He noted that Cardinal McElroy had invited the parish to be one of 17 pilot parishes in “Re-imagining Parish Life and Leadership in a Synodal Church,” a diocesan initiative to foster synodality at the parish level.
“I hope that we can start creating this synodal culture where dialogue, prayer and discernment will become fundamental elements in our parish lifestyle,” Father Gonzales said.
He also anticipates that the recent upgrades won’t be the last changes to the campus.
“I expect expansion of the parish property,” he said. “The parish still carries the honorary name as ‘Mexican National Parish in Otay,’ and it requires more space and facilities to accommodate the needs of the parish.”
