OREM — Saint Francis of Assisi Parish dedicated their long-awaited church Feb. 19, and the new façade is a Spanish mission style. "For about 75 years we had been a Franciscan parish," said Juliana Boerio-Goates, Saint Francis of Assisi pastoral coordinator and building committee chair. "Before we selected an architect, the building committee met and formulated some basic ideas of what we wanted. The roots for the connection to the Spanish mission style are long and deep with our long-term parishioners. For our newcomers, and especially the Spanish population, many came to Utah from California and are familiar with mission-style churches." However, traditional mission-style churches are long and narrow, with other features consistent with the times in which they were built – small windows with stained glass, stucco and bar tile roofs, said Boerio-Goates. "But it was necessary for us to build a church that would seat at least 1,000 people and have them close enough to the altar." In the new church are seven statues: six in the interior of the main church, and one in the daily Mass chapel. They are Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Blessed Mother with a group of children, the Sacred Heart, Saint Joseph, Saint Francis, and Mother Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants to the United States. All are hand-carved wooden statues, approximately 40 inches tall. They were created by Dolfi of Italy and shepherded through the process by Bob Egan of Egan Church Furnishings in New England. The corpus and the cross on the crucifix were both hand-carved from the Demetz Studio in Italy. The statue of The Mother of the World’s Children depicts youngsters from many lands in this statue. St. Francis of Assisi parishioners come from Asia, North and South America and Europe. Mother Cabrini immigrated to the United States in 1889, and became a naturalized citizen in 1909. She worked among immigrants in this country in the early part of the 19th century. She is the patroness of immigrants and represents someone who lived in the 20th century. The Spanish mission style of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church goes back to the mid-1800s when Irish Catholics in the mining industry and railroad began to settle in the Utah Valley. By 1891, there were enough Catholics to create the Diocese of Salt Lake, according to "Protestant and Catholic Churches of Provo." The city’s first Catholic church opened in 1893, when members renovated a large adobe house to use as a place of worship. They named it Saint Peter’s. More than two decades later, they tore it down to replace it with a new church, but it wasn’t until 1921 that property was purchased on the corner of 500 West and 200 North in Provo. The structure was to seat 500 people and be Italian Romanesque. In 1923, the basement was completed and dedicated as Immaculate Conception Parish. In 1931, priests belonging to the Franciscan Order assumed the administration of the parish. The new plans called for a simpler mission-style building with stucco walls and a tile roof. Interior plans showed a vestibule, a center auditorium, and two sacristy rooms. Dedication of the new building took place on Dec. 21, 1936. Nine years after the church was completed, on Sept. 30, 1945, the building and its new marble altar were consecrated and the parish was renamed in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. The parish moved to Orem in 2000.
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