One Sacramento woman is linked by birth to the hard-rock miner who would be both the master builder of the cathedral and first bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento.

One Sacramento man represents the third generation of his family to find spiritual renewal within the towering walls of the Diocese of Sacramento’s mother church.

One diocesan priest is blessed with the privilege of administering the sacraments of his faith to thousands at the great church of the three towers.

With a mission to preserve the church that has touched hearts and lifted spirits for over a century, the Diocese of Sacramento is in the midst of a major restoration of the cathedral. The promise is that stories of faith such as these will continue to be lived out for generations to come.

As a child, Barbara Gormley (now Barbara Morgan) would climb the staircase of the two-story Victorian house on H Street where she spent much of her early life and gaze with wonder at the life-sized portrait of the Catholic priest who became the Diocese of Sacramento’s first bishop.She was looking at a picture of Bishop Patrick Manogue, a Sacramento icon who was also her great, great uncle.

At the age of eight, Morgan left the home of her parents, William Manogue Gormley and his wife Henrietta, and went to live with her grandfather, William F. Gormley, at his request following the death of his wife, Mary Elizabeth, Bishop Manogue’s niece. Always her grandfather’s pet, young Barbara remembers "stories about the bishop were constant.”

“Bishop Manogue was always larger than life to me,” said Morgan, now 78, who resides in the Land Park area of Sacramento. “He was a giant of a man who had no ego, as far as I could figure out.”

The Gormley home, which included a vast library, large breakfast room, formal dining room and parlor, was filled with family pictures. They told the saga of Bishop Manogue, who as an orphaned child, with six brothers and sisters, left Ireland to live in the United States, arriving in California at the age of 22 in 1853.

Morgan recalls stories about the time, following Bishop Manogue’s ordination to the priesthood in 1861, when he was assigned to the Diocese of Virginia City, Nev. Following the death of his sister, Catherine Manogue Fogarty, Bishop Manogue cared for Fogarty’s daughter Mary Elizabeth and another niece, Annie Dooling. The two girls grew up under his guardianship in the convent near St. Mary’s in the Mountains Church.

“Family was very important to (Bishop Manogue),” Morgan said. “My grandmother said on the day he died, she looked out of their house by the cathedral and couldn’t believe carriages and street cars were moving. She thought the whole world should have stopped.”

One of her grandmother Gormley’s favorite stories was about Bishop Manogue as a young priest in Virginia City. Among his greatest challenges was meeting the spiritual needs in his parish, which included most of the state of Nevada and the Sierra Nevada region of California.

One night he was called upon to ride over 20 miles on horseback far into the hills to give a dying woman last rites. When the woman’s drunken husband demanded Father Manogue leave, the 6-foot-3-inch priest took him aside for “a talk,” returned to administer the rites, and rode away.

Morgan said that Bishop Manogue had a grand vision of the new cathedral, built from 1887 to 1889. “(Bishop Manogue) wanted a beautiful cathedral. It was going to be the center of Catholicism for the entire West,” she said.

Morgan’s parents’ home on 20th Street and Capitol Avenue placed her near the cathedral where she was baptized and attended Mass every Sunday. At the time, families had their own pews, and the Gormley pew was right up front.

“That aisle we walked to get to our pew just looked endless to me,” she said, adding that the long walk was worth the effort. “The original altar was so beautiful it seemed to reach up to heaven.”

Morgan heartily endorses the diocese’s plan to restore the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacramento to reflect the concept of those responsible for its original design.

“The tributes to God that are done in our own feeble, human way should stay the way they were when they were developed,” she said.

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As a child, nothing seemed grander to Bart Lagomarsino than processing two by two with St. Joseph School classmates, led by Sisters of Mercy, through Plaza Park, to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament for Friday afternoon Mass.

The cathedral is as closely linked with Lagomarsino’s childhood memories as the home he grew up in several blocks away at 17th and H streets.

As far back as he can remember, the cathedral was the place where he attended 9 a.m. Sunday Mass, where he served as an altar boy and where he and his brother Jerry received the sacraments of their faith.

“From the age of eight, getting to serve Mass in my scale of values was a big deal,” said Lagomarsino, who remembers being a trainbearer during major liturgical celebrations for the late Bishop Robert J. Armstrong.

Lagomarsino, 70, has genealogical roots linked to the cathedral dating back to June 12, 1887, when his grandfather, Bartolomeo Lagomarsino, was among more than 8,000 people to witness the laying of the cornerstone. He said the cathedral’s strategic location in downtown Sacramento, near the state Capitol and all the major department stores, was a major coup.

“For people of my vintage, during a walk down K Street you knew half the people you met,” Lagomarsino said. “The cathedral was the place to go for spiritual renewal in the midst of all that activity.”

His mother, Lillian Donahue, and her three brothers were born in Sacramento in the 1890s and early 1900s. All were cathedral parishioners.

“The cathedral has always been something spiritual, a symbol of Christian life right in the middle of what was the heart of Sacramento,” Lagomarsino said. “It’s a place where a lot of people go for spiritual renewal.”

It is also his belief that the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament is magnificent in its accessibility to a broad range of people, from the homeless to some of the capital city’s wealthiest citizens.

“If you want to look at California and the diversity of this state, and you want to see it in one place, go to Mass at the cathedral,” Lagomarsino said.

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The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament was both a home and a place of ministry for Msgr. James Kidder for a quarter of a century.

When he left in 1992 for his current assignment as pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in El Dorado Hills, he knew what he would miss most about Sacramento’s mother church.

“I never saw another church where there was such a feeling of inclusion. Whether you were the judge or the janitor, both of them were at Mass,” he said. “There were all colors, all walks of life. It is everybody’s church.”

The priest can trace the roots of his affection for the cathedral back to stories spun by his great uncle, Tom Brady, a bricklayer who worked on building the church.

“When he would reminisce, he captured my attention as a kid,” Msgr. Kidder said, recalling his uncle describing the precarious nature of putting bricks up over 100 feet from the ground without much in the way of scaffolding down below.

Msgr. Kidder served both as parochial vicar and pastor at the cathedral beginning in 1967, and it was during his watch that the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament celebrated a major milestone, its 100th anniversary in 1989. In honor of the historic event, he headed up a capital fund drive which raised approximately $700,000 to support a major renovation project.

“The roof was leaking badly, the carpet was worn out and some of the original windows had been put in to be temporary,” Msgr. Kidder said. “We thought after 100 years we ought to put in permanent windows.”

The renovation project included a complete reroofing with copper sheeting and replacement of 42 stained glass windows. Built in Massachusetts by Cummings Studio of North Adams, the windows were designed by artist Susan Van Heukelom to compliment other spectacular stained glass windows in place. Scriptural passages from Deuteronomy and Ecclesiastes and a 100-year history of the diocese, featuring names of the bishops and their mottoes, are included in the windows.

“The spiritual feel achieved by stained glass windows is important,” Msgr. Kidder said. “You know you are in very sacred space.”

Evidence that during its first 100 years, the cathedral was embraced as a place to celebrate the rites of passage of the Catholic faith, he said, was the fact that more than 22,000 baptisms and 5,000 marriages had occurred, as well as 87 ordinations to the priesthood.

In the homily Msgr. Kidder delivered during the centennial Mass, he shared what he and thousands of others have discovered at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.

“The church of Sacramento has had a long history of living, giving birth,” he said. “We are built into a house where God lives in the spirit.”

Copyright © 2001 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

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