History of our Church
The story of St. Anthony Catholic Church is woven directly into the romantic history of Southern California, as inseparable as the land barons who donated ranch property for the building itself. Long before Riverside became a county, in the years when Spain ruled California and the Franciscans ran their missions, Rancho San Jacinto’s Catholic community took root in a two-room adobe chapel with one shared fireplace. Today San Jacinto’s Catholic community is the oldest in Riverside County, and the parish is the sixth oldest of 95 in the Diocese of San Bernardino.
Mission San Luis Rey, in Oceanside, held land far into what is now Corona. Missionaries ran cattle through the San Jacinto Valley. They built the little adobe chapel, later called Casa Loma, on the hill at the north intersection of the Ramona Expressway and Warren Road where visiting priests would minister to local Indians. Some place the date of the chapel’s construction at 1798, the year Mission San Luis Rey was founded, but most historians, including the diocese archives, give its construction date as about 1819. The United States was still in its infancy. James Monroe, the fifth president, was in office and Florida was becoming a state.
Jose Antonio Estudillo, son of the San Diego Presidio’s Spanish captain, built his 12-room mansion in what is now Old Town San Diego in about 1828. His own career flourished early in life, never faltering even as Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, and, in 1848, when Mexico lost California to the U.S. When Mexico confiscated the mission lands from the Catholic Church, it named Jose Antonio Estudillo of the Mission San Luis Rey holdings, and Pio Pico, Mexico’s last governor of California, gave him huge land grants, including most of the San Jacinto Valley.
With the land, the Estudillos acquired a San Jacinto ranch home, said to have been in disrepair, Casa Loma, which included the adobe chapel. The home provided a view for miles in all directions, and the rancho soon became the Estudillos’ favorite of their three homes, a place where they gathered for family events, according to Sister Catherine McShane, a history professor at the University of San Diego in 1969.
The Estudillos sold Casa Loma and 3,800 additional acres to Francisco Pico, Gov. Pio Pico’s nephew, and his wife Dolores, in 1873. The Picos remodeled the rancho, incorporating the little adobe chapel and its fireplace into a parlor. Unfortunately, fire destroyed the house in May 1968, taking the adobe with it. Another house now sits on the hill, its design completely different from its predecessors.
Back in the mid-1800s Francisco Pico and Francisco Estudillo became instrumental in financing construction of San Jacinto’s Catholic Church. In 1976, Francisco Pico’s daughter, Ruth M. Pico, wrote a letter to St. Anthony Parish telling how her uncle Miguel Aguirre (her mother’s brother) also became a benefactor of the church. The Aguirre children would bring meals to the priests when they bunked at the church. One of the Aguirres would later drive the St. Hyacinth school bus at times.
Jose Antonio’s son, Francisco, built a brick home for his family at the corner of Seventh and Main in 1884. His brother, Antonio, built its twin, behind a grove of olive trees on Soboba Road. Two years later Francisco Estudillo set about establishing a Catholic Church in the San Jacinto Valley, donating land running along Seventh Street from Victoria to Santa Fe.
Stories as to why Francisco Estudillo chose the Seventh Street location differ slightly among longtime San Jacinto residents, but all seem to agree Francisco’s wife made the decision.
“Mr. Estudillo asks Mrs. Estudillo, ‘Where do you want your church?’” said Sharon Terracciano, a longtime St. Anthony parishioner and local history buff. And, Mrs. Estudillo is said to have replied, “I want to sit on my front porch and see it.” Indeed, the church is a short walk from the mansion and, before houses were built between the two properties, the church would have been quite visible from the mansion.
The original wood-frame church, painted white, with a tall steeple, faced Victoria Avenue. The parish was founded in 1890. Construction was completed and the church dedicated on Oct. 20, 1892. However, it was not known as St. Anthony Catholic Church, but rather St. Mary Mission, and it fell under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles-Monterey Diocese, California’s only diocese at that time. Priests would ride horses out to San Jacinto from St. Bernardine Church in San Bernardino to say Mass and provide the sacraments to the people of St. Mary Mission as well as St. Rose of Lima Indian Chapel, now known as St. Joseph and located on the Soboba Indian Reservation.
In 1893 Riverside County was formed and St. Boniface Chapel in Banning took over responsibility for the San Jacinto Catholic community. Fr. B. Florian Hahn, a missionary priest who ran a vocational school for Indian children in Banning, ordered a room built onto the San Jacinto church so priests could stay overnight. Until then Francisco Estudillo hosted visiting priests in his mansion. Still, San Jacinto had no priest of its own. The Riverside County Directory of 1893-94 said of San Jacinto, “The Catholics have a neat, well-built church, but at present are without a pastor.”
From 1896 to 1905 St. Francis de Sales Parish in Riverside oversaw San Jacinto, maintaining sacramental records and sending priests by horse and buggy. The 1899 diocese directory notes Sunday School was held every Sunday morning at 10:30 a.m. in San Jacinto with Mass for 125 said every second Sunday of the month.
In 1905 St. Mary’s Mission finally achieved parish status, enabling it to maintain its own sacramental records, documents dotted with the names of people who built the church and community. The new parish was named St. Anthony and the church was one of only two buildings that weathered the 1918 earthquake. Only the church’s chimney came down during the 6.8 magnitude quake.
San Jacinto’s Catholic population grew, and a new, larger, church was built in 1940, the one currently used. The stained glass windows from the original St. Mary Mission were moved into St. Anthony, and the wooden building converted into a parish hall. It eventually fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1957 to the consternation of local historians. In 1946, following the WWII population boom in California, the parish added St. Hyacinth Academy, which now serves students in preschool through eighth-grade.
The 21st Century has seen a continual growth in San Jacinto’s Catholic population. Clergy has added Masses to keep up, but services generally fill the pews. In 2005 and 2006, under the direction of Fr. Ciro Libanati, remodeling included the church’s interior and landscaping outside. Fountains and benches were added to give the grounds a serene feel, and statues and other artifacts were repaired. The church’s facilities are abuzz with groups meeting in its school classrooms and ministry center from early in the morning until late at night. Plans are underway to expand the church as San Jacinto’s population continues to grow.