While the meek shall inherit the earth, as the saying goes, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is being anything but meek about promoting its new downtown cathedral as a mainstream tourist attraction.

Although the church isn’t scheduled for completion until 2002, clergy are fanning out across the country to preach the word of the new Our Lady Queen of Angels Cathedral to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Masses in various foreign languages are being planned, accompanied by ethnic-specific food festivals, specifically to attract church-goers of all ethnicities, and officials hope religious relics will draw record numbers of tourists from Catholic-heavy Latin American countries.

And the church isn’t working alone. The archdiocese has entered into a partnership with the Convention & Visitors Bureau to bring tourists from all walks of life, not just Catholics, to the new Cathedral.

The visitors bureau has obliged by working the church into its L.A. pitch. Packaged with the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Staples Center, the cathedral is being positioned by local tourism officials as part of a golden troika that will turn blighted downtown into a vital tourist attraction.

The bureau is preparing information packets featuring glossy photos and high praise for the $163 million church, to be included in promotional materials sent nationwide to convention planners, tour operators and anyone else who wants to know more about L.A.

“The cathedral is being built with the full realization that it’s going to be a tourist attraction,” said George Kirkland, president and CEO of the Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We want to make it an integral part of our downtown sell.”

While the visitors bureau gets the word out to the secular world, the archdiocese is concentrating on telling Catholics about the shining new cathedral that will be the bishop’s seat for the greater Los Angeles area.

The new pastor of the church, Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik, has been traveling the country delivering talks to fellow Catholics, urging them to see the new cathedral the first built in this country in decades. Last week, Kostelnik was in Kentucky, where he gave a lecture titled, “Bringing God Downtown.”

“I’m going out to the (Catholic) populace and calling people into church,” he said.

Later this week, Cardinal Roger Mahony will get into the act when he speaks at Town Hall Los Angeles about the new cathedral.

Catholics are the key tourist demographic for the church. In California alone, there are 9 million Catholics, and officials say the value of that market can’t be overestimated, especially since the majority of tourists to L.A. come from other parts of the state.

There’s already evidence that those within a few hours drive of L.A. will flock downtown to attend services. When the church officially blessed the site three years ago, 17,000 people came to the ceremony. According to Kostelnik, 3,500 of them were from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the farthest reaches of the Archdiocese’s jurisdiction.

“Many of those people had never been downtown before,” said Kostelnik. “And that was just to bless the dirt.”

To accommodate that interest, Cardinal Mahony will hold regular masses, along with 15 to 20 annual liturgies for such things as ordinations, masses for public safety officials and lawyers, and special holiday services.

To attract a number of ethnic groups, the church plans to hold some masses in foreign languages and designate special days to celebrate specific groups. “We might have a Korean day when mass will be in Korean and outside there will be a Korean food festival,” said Kostelnik. “That will be attractive not only to Koreans but to people who want to learn about that culture.”

While it’s important to attract local Catholics, officials are also targeting people from as far away as Mexico the No. 1 international tourist market for Los Angeles and a country chock full of Catholics. “All of our foreign initiative are going to exploit the fact that we have a cathedral,” said Kirkland. “Mexico will be at the top of our mind.”

With most cities in Central and South America built around churches, many tourists from those areas seek out cathedrals and their courtyards as the spiritual and commercial heart of the city. With its mission-like design, its shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and 2.5-acre courtyard, church officials believe Our Lady Queen of Angels Cathedral will make downtown more attractive to those foreign visitors.

“Historically, cathedrals have been the gathering places for people in cities,” said Msgr. Terry Fleming. “People will be drawn to this place.”

Architectural wonder

For downtown revitalization to work, the cathedral will have to attract more than Catholics. So the visitors bureau is pushing the architectural merit of the building and modeling its marketing strategy on the successful Getty Center in Brentwood.

Designed by Richard Meier, the Getty museum received enough free press when it opened to keep the parking lot full for several years. Of the 1.5 million people who visited the Getty last year, 13 percent of them were from other countries. And local tourism officials acknowledge that many of those tourists weren’t coming to see the art.

“Architecture is the reason to go there,” said Kirkland. “The architecture is very compelling and it gets even more print than the collection.”

Officials are banking on the same thing happening with the cathedral. And they are banking on media correspondents at the upcoming Democratic National Convention at Staples Center growing bored with the certainty that Al Gore will be nominated and searching for something else to write about.

“When the DNC comes to town, we will welcome reporters to the construction site,” said Kostelnik. “We want them to see the cathedral as another wonderful positive element making up the resurgence of L.A.”

Holistic sell

Officials also realize that people won’t necessarily come to downtown L.A. just to see a church. So they’re pitching a sort of golden architectural triangle to attract not only visitors but new housing, restaurants and shops.

Jose Rafael Moneo, the Spanish architect who designed the cathedral, may not be well-known by the American public, but in 1995, he won the Pritzker prize a sort of Nobel Prize of the architectural world.

His church, which has been described by architecture critics as “wonderfully inspired,” will sit strategically close to the new Walt Disney Concert Hall, also designed by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Frank Gehry.

Tourism officials say they hope those buildings, along with Staples Center, will form an esplanade down Grand Avenue that inspires walking tours and day-long visits.

“We’re saying, ‘Come and pray at the cathedral on Sunday and then play at Staples,'” said Msg. Fleming. “If there’s something for people to do, they’ll come to church on Sundays and then walk around the city.”

But the revitalization effort could be hampered by the location of the cathedral at Temple and Hill streets. Because it’s bordered by the Hollywood (101) Freeway on one side and hulking government buildings on others, little new retail development can take place there.

Critics say the cathedral would have done even more to revitalize downtown if it had been built on the former site of St. Vibiana at Second and Main streets, where greater redevelopment would be possible.

St. Vibiana was closed because of earthquake damage, and for a while, planners considered putting the new cathedral on the site of the old church. But because preservationists didn’t want the old church knocked down, the archdiocese eventually chose the site on Bunker Hill.

“If it had been built (on Second) it would have been a catalyst for development on all sides,” said Robert Harris, director of graduate studies in architecture at USC. “As it is, it won’t inspire new development in a part of the city that needs it.”