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THE BASILICA OF THE MISSION OF SAN CARLOS BORROMEO
 To enter the church at
Carmel Mission is to step back in time more than two centuries ago. Most
visitors and indeed, even our local parishioners are surprised to discover that
the Mission church is not the first Chapel for worship to be erected on this
property.
The present stone church
was planned by Blessed Junipero Serra during his administration as Father–Presidente
of the California Mission Chain (1770-1784). However many factors contributed
to its actual erection being delayed until years after his death. Serra wished to build a
permanent stone house of worship in the style of those in Mexico and Spain like
those he erected in the Province of Queretaro in Mexico. This type of building
required skilled masons to cut and dress the stones and no professionals were to
be had in the province of California.
Serra’s successor as
Father-Presidente, Fray Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, finally was able to convince
the Central government of New Spain to send an architect and stonemasons to
carry out this huge undertaking. Most of the mission churches in California
were constructed of adobe (mud –brick) and were only as permanent as the roofs
that protected the mud walls from the elements. The very nature of mud as a
building material did not allow for much in the way of architectural
embellishment and stone, of course, was the preferred medium.
 Stone could not be
manipulated or engineered without skilled workers and most of the California
Missions never advanced beyond the adobe stage which required wide heavy wall,
and huge supporting timbers for the roof structures. Since it was nearly
impossible to find trees in California that would be of enough height and girth
to safely span the lateral walls, churches of adobe rarely surpassed 30 feet in
width which made for a long tunnel-like structure in order to hold a fair number
of worshippers.
 The architect of Carmel
Mission’s stone church was Manuel Ruiz of San Blas, Mexico. His brother
Santiago, a master stonemason also received a license to work in the Province of
California for a period of three years. It was believed that Manuel Ruiz’s
original conception for the ceiling of the church was to resemble the six-part
gothic ribbed vaulting that he executed in the baptistery of the church. To
construct a ceiling of this design would have required much longer than their
work visas would have permitted them to do safely. A design of catenary or
parabolic arches was settled upon and even so, this design proved to be
dangerous in earthquake country and the stone-vaulted ceiling was removed by
1817.
This stone church was
begun in 1795 and was basically complete by 1797 when it was dedicated for
worship on Christmas Day of that year. Much remained to do to complete the
interior, and decoration of the building with the addition of side altarpieces
went on for much of the mission-period.
 When the church was
originally constructed, the exterior was much different than it appears today (
the result of a radical remodeling between 1817-1822. The bell towers that
flank the entrance to the church did not achieve their present form until that
time. They were simply one-sided, multi-tiered structures pierced with arches
to hold the bells.
After the great
Earthquake of 1812 struck the length of California leaving most of the missions
in shambles ( though apparently doing little damage here), the Padres were
terrified by the report of the collapse of the heavy stone vaulted ceiling at
Mission Capistrano killing many worshippers who were attending Mass, that they
decided to take down the five-foot thick parabolic vault at Carmel. They left
the major stone arches in place and unfilled with planking where the removed the
vault itself. Let with a tremendous quantity of stone, they utilized the
ceiling pieces to construct the Mortuary Chapel of the Passion of Christ (now
more commonly known as the Bethlehem Chapel), as well as the back three sides of
the bell towers, the exterior stairway, and many massive buttresses to shore-up
the tilting walls.
 As originally built, the
structure did not have an external roof of terra-cotta barrel tiles as it does
today, the exterior of the wall was simply plastered on the top, open to the
elements as many churches of Mexico are. After the removal of the stone
ceiling, the walls of the church were raised three feet to accommodate the
trusses necessary to carry the new tile roof.
The interior of the
church as it appears today is far simpler than it looked originally when as many
as seven large-scale side altarpieces lined the walls. Almost twenty statues
adorned these altars and most were lost when a fire destroyed the first Sacred
Heart Church in Salinas were then had been taken in the third quarter of the
nineteenth century.
In the Mission Period,
the large crucifix and flanking statues of Our Lady and St. John were housed in
the side Chapel, and the beautiful statue of ‘La Conquistadora’ (Our Lady of
Bethlehem) held center focus in a fine glided wood and crystal niche in the
center of the reredos.
 The original reredos was
destroyed when the last portion of ceiling collapsed in 1851, and from the
fragments and descriptions it was ascertained that it may have resembled the one
at Mission Dolores which was constructed of earlier gilded portions of massive
golden wood altarpieces being disassembled at the Mother Church of San Fernando
in Mexico City due to the change in architectural fashions. It is known from a
letter written by one of the Padres from one mission to another, that the side
altar of the church at Carmel were constructed from earlier Churiguerresque
– style pieces.
The present furnishings
of the church are mainly the originals as far as the statues, paintings and
other artifacts are concerned. Most of these are of the lot that were removed
from the building by the Monterey Pastor, Fr. Sadoc Villarasa in 1851 when the
ceiling began to show signs of giving way. They survived by being used at the
Old Presidio Chapel when it was enlarged to serve as a parish church in 1856 and
remained in place until their return here in the first half of the twentieth
century.
In the early 1960’s, the
Diocesan Bishop, Aloyisus Willinger petitioned the Holy See in Rome to be
designated a Minor Basilica. A Basilica is the highest honorary rank for a
church and implies great historical and artistic importance. Pope John XXlll
honored Carmel Mission’s church with the rank of Basilica in 1961 in recognition
of Serra’s heroic work in the establishment of Christianity on the western coast
of the United States as well as the unique architectural features of the
structure such as the Moorish dome and the parabolic ceiling.
 In the entry of the church hang the
insignia that the church has been declared a basilica, - the pavilion ( papal
umbrella) and the “tintinabulum” (basilica bell). Since that designation, Carmel
Mission Basilica was honored with a visit of the Holy Father from Rome in 1987,
when pope John Paul ll visited the church to deliver an important address on
evangelization as well as laying a wreathe at the foot of the grave of the
mission’s founder, Junipero Serra, who he would beatify two years later in Rome
at the Basilica of St. Peter’s.
by Sir Richard Joseph Menn, G.C. St.G.G.
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