Point Reyes Light - December 16, 1999
Sacred Heart volunteers inspired to build shrine
After talking about it for seven years - and working day and night for eight days - volunteers last Sunday celebrated the completion of a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Olema.
Some 500 Latinos and Anglos gathered for a spectacular festival to bless the shrine on the feast day of the "patroness of the Americas," celebrated throughout the United States and Latin America.
The Latino community at Sacred Heart held many meetings over the years to discuss the shrine, and had even worked with an architect to come up with plans. But the proposed cost was $36,000.
"That was too much for a small community. Besides, we wanted to build something different, something original," said Point Reyes resident Alfonso Ramirez, who with his brother Ampelio and friend Tony Aguirre worked literally day and night to build the shrine.
During construction they closed their tree and landscape business for two weeks. They worked after nightfall by the light of their car headlights.
"We were all so busy, and the architect said we should wait until next year," Ramirez explained. "But two weeks ago, Father Bain said to me, we talk too much about it. 'Let's get it done by the 12th of December. You're the one, I know you can do it.'"
With that encouragement, Ramirez began asking local businesses to donate materials. Point Reyes Station's Building Supply Center provided lumber and rebar, Rich Readimix donated cement, and local contractors Kevin Lunny and Dennis Rodoni donated landscaping and rocks, and redwood shingles for the roof.
"I told them I want this for the community and they said okay, whatever you want," said Ramirez, who besides his time, donated the 28 tons of Sonoma fieldstone required to build the ten- by nine-foot shrine.
Ramirez said he "had a vision" about what the shrine should look like, similar to a "capilla" - or little chapel -in Mexico.
For the next eight days and nights, Ramirez, his brother, employees, friends and family made a clearing in a redwood grove at the south end of the parking lot at Sacred Heart, built the shrine, and landscaped the surrounding area. Both Latinos and Anglos came to help. Without access to electricity, they used hand tools to mix the mortar, which was made with creekwater.
Working into the daylight hours of last Sunday morning, Ramirez put the finishing touches on the shrine just in time for the festival.
The community raised the few thousand dollars needed to pay for the festival, which included Mariachis and 17 elaborately dressed ritual tribe dancers who traced the evolution of the Mexicans from their Aztec roots to current times. Music and a dinner of carnitas, rice and tamales stretched long into the afternoon.
The six-by three-foot painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe that hangs in the shrine was ordered from Arizona three years ago, in preparation for the shrine.
The building of the shrine has helped to heal a congregation stung by more than its share of controversy in the last decade. Many Latino parishioners left Sacred Heart in the early nineties after a bilingual priest was asked to leave when he offended ranchers by criticizing ranchworker housing. More recently, a bilingual priest became ill and left, himself the subject of swirling rumors.
But the arrival of Father Richard Bain over a year ago has helped bring the parish back together, members say.
"The community is healing, we have more people now," said Ramirez. "We know how good and professional [Father Bain] is and we think he came here to rescue us, to save the community." Ramirez told The Light that this project in particular has helped mend the parish.
Anna Ramirez (no relation to Alfonso) explained that although the community built the shrine, Father Bain is the one who got it going. "He left messages for us and encouraged us to do it. He did it," she said.
"When [Father Bain] came to Sacred Heart he didn't know Spanish and began studying," she said. "He promised he would celebrate Mass in Spanish before he left us, and he did it in three months."
Although Father Joe Corral, a visiting bilingual Catholic priest from Santa Rosa celebrated Mass last Sunday, Bain blessed the shrine in Spanish.
Coincidentally or maybe not, Bain is the Director of the Healing Ministry for the Archdiocese of San Francisco and has received a great deal of attention for his healing missions. Bain travels the country celebrating Masses for Healing, and will be at St. Hilary's Catholic Church in Tiburon this Saturday, Dec. 18 at 11 a.m.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is the Virgin Mary as she is believed to have appeared first to Mexican peasant Juan Diego, is also thought to have special powers to cure the sick and intervene in lost causes. Candles to adorn her picture at the shrine can be purchased, and a book detailing this ambitious undertaking will soon go on display.
Alfonso Ramirez is extremely proud of the shrine and the people that pitched in to build it. "This is an example for our Latino community, in the short time we had to finish this project, that together with the Anglo community we can make a difference," he said.