What is the largest catholic church in the united states

St. Charles Borromeo Church will seat 3,200 parishioners, second only to the National Shrine.

The largest parish church in the United States is soon to be completed in California. St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, in Visalia, will seat approximately 3,200 faithful. The new church building will consolidate several parishes and merge communities of various backgrounds. 

Digital renderings of the new church can be seen in the CBS report featured above. According to CBS, the architecture was inspired by that of the historic California missions. Featuring whitewashed walls and an adobe roof, the church will match this aesthetic. 

The building will encompass some 33,000 square feet, with ample room for social distancing. It is expected to exceed the California Green Code for energy efficiency and sustainability. The construction effort is scheduled to last until 2022. 

When completed it will seat more parishoners than any U.S. parish church. This includes the Christ Cathedral, formerly the Crystal Cathedral. The only church building that will seat more is Washington, DC’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The National Shrine, however, is not considered a parish church.

A report from Religion News highlights some of the features of this Catholic megachurch. The sanctuary will be flanked by 9-foot stained glass windows and a baptistry will be placed at the entrance. An octagon-shaped dome over the altar will be emblazoned with the four Evangelists. 

The church will display a 48-foot canvas mural depicting the archangels above the saints who are kneeling before the Holy Trinity. The painting will also feature citrus trees and cows in a nod to the Visalia region, which is largely agricultural. 

Consolidations 

The decision to create what will become the largest Catholic church in the U.S. was motivated in part by the shortage of priests. As with many parts of the U.S., California’s active priest population has been decreasing in recent years. Since the 1980s, the Diocese of Fresno alone has seen its priestly ranks dwindle from 90 to 67.

In order to continue to serve Visalia’s Catholic population with fewer priests, three local parishes were consolidated into the Good Shepherd Parish in 2016. Without a centralized church building, however, the three priests who serve the congregation had to hold 11 weekly Masses in various church buildings around Visalia. The new St. Charles Borromeo Church will streamline their weekly duties. 

When complete, St. Charles Borromeo will cater to an ethnically diverse congregation. The majority of the Visalia population is Latino, but there will also be Portuguese and other European descent, Vietnamese and Filipino parishioners. 

Henry Medina, deacon and director of administration of Good Shepherd Catholic Parish told Religion News: 

“You start to see, now, the blending of all the different cultures. All these parishes now come under a new identity and what they had in the past is now historic.” He added, “Now all the Catholics in the city of Visalia are under one roof united under one God.”

Read all the details of St. Charles Borromeo Church at Religion News.

A vision of John Thomas Steinbock took an important step toward reality Tuesday with groundbreaking for a new Catholic church in Visalia.

According to project officials, St. Charles Borromeo Church will seat over 3,000 when it opens in spring 2021, making it the largest seating capacity Catholic parish church in the United States. The current largest is the Baltimore Basilica at about 2,000 seats.

The National Shrine in Washington, D.C., seats 10,000.

Steinbock was the fourth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno and served from 1991 until his death in 2010.

At a 2007 event on the same site, Monsignor Raymond Dreiling, the pastor at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Visalia, said Steinbock told him it was his mission to build a church when Dreiling first came to Visalia about four years prior.

Dreiling merged three Visalia parishes – St. Marys’, Holy Family and St. Thomas – to form Good Shepherd Catholic Parish, a key to making the massive church a reality.

Bishops who followed Steinbock, Armando Xavier Ochoa and currently Joseph Vincent Brennan, supported the Visalia vision.

Dreiling said at the 2007 event that he chose to name the church after St. Charles Borromeo to honor the late Monsignor Charles O’Mahony because they share the same first name. O’Mahony had the foresight to purchase the property in 1961, Dreiling said. “Now we’re reaping the benefits of his vision.”

The new church on the corner of Caldwell Avenue and Akers Street in southwest Visalia will have a California Mission-style facade.

This story was originally published October 15, 2019 3:22 PM.