Updates, plus what the public is saying, about the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine

Anticipation of the opening of a religious shrine in Oklahoma City reached new heights with the recent dedication of two statues and another key component at the site.

The first public event at the site of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine site was held on Dec. 11, with the dedication of Tepeyac Hill and statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego. The Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine at 700 SE 89 is a $40 million project named for an Oklahoma priest on the path to Roman Catholic sainthood. Rother was an Okarche farmer before he was ordained into the priesthood. He served as a missionary in Guatemala, where he was killed by unknown assailants in 1981 at age 46. In 2016, Pope Francis declared him a martyr for the faith — the first recognized Catholic martyr from the United States. He was beatified in 2017 in a ceremony in Oklahoma City.

More: Failing Latin and being on a death list: Here are things to know about Blessed Stanley Rother

Here are some updates and what we know about the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, the re-creation of Tepeyac Hill and the public's first up-close glimpse of the site.

When will the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine site open?

The recent dedication of Tepeyac Hill, which is a re-creation of a sacred site in Mexico City, served as a preview for the religious site, which will have its own dedication on Feb. 17, 2023.

The Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine is almost complete

The shrine buildings, including the shrine church, are expected to be completed by the end of December, said Avery Holt, Archdiocese of Oklahoma City' interim communications director. The Spanish-colonial style shrine church, considered the capstone of the shrine campus, will be the largest Catholic Church in Oklahoma, with seating for up to 2,000 people. The shrine site also includes a chapel where Blessed Stanley will be entombed, a pilgrim center and museum. Catholic leaders have said other aspects of the shrine campus will be added over time.

Thousands gathered for first up-close view of shrine site

Holt said the crowd size at the Tepeyac Hill dedication activities grew to between 3,000 and 4,000 people. He said volunteers who helped direct traffic at the site helped archdiocese leaders come up with this estimate based on their tally counters used to obtain attendance figures. The Rev. Don Wolf, who will be the pastor of the new shrine church, said there were obvious signs that people were extremely curious about the unopened church and other shrine buildings.

"There were 100 people who wanted to know if they could get in and look around," Wolf said. "We had to have a posted guard on Monday morning so that only the construction worker got in."

Shrine church parishioners anticipate move

Archdiocese leaders have said the church will host many large diocesan events and will help accommodate the growing Hispanic population whose parishes are significantly overcrowded. Two of those predominately Hispanic parishes, Sacred Heart and Holy Angels, are being merged to become one parish that will worship at the shrine church. Wolf said people who will be part of the shrine church parish were excited when he asked them to walk onto the shrine campus together before the Tepeyac Hill dedication began. He said he thought the walk would help symbolize their unity and provide them with an opportunity to view their future home church site together.

"You know, that was wonderful, and it went just as wonderful as I hoped it would, with that whole sense of us being able to enter our new space there," Wolf said.

Victor Rodriguez, 17, was among the Sacred Heart parishioners who anticipated attending worship services at the new church.

"This is my first time being here ― it's pretty cool and it's near, too," he said, referring to the shrine's close proximity to his neighborhood.

Oklahoma's re-creation of Tepeyac Hill will be treasured

The 50-foot-tall Tepeyac Hill on the shrine grounds is modeled after the original Tepeyac Hill, a site in Mexico where, according to tradition, the Aztec peasant Juan Diego (declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002) is said to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary on Dec. 12, 1531. According to accounts, the brown-skinned and pregnant apparition told Diego to tell Roman Catholic Church leaders to build a cathedral for her in the mountains. When a clergyman demanded proof of the encounter, the apparition, known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, told Diego to gather roses on the side of a mountain — in the middle of December. When Diego appeared at the church with the miraculous roses, the shocked bishop believed him and a church was built just as Our Lady requested.

The faithful pay homage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas, by leaving roses and other flowers on the original Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. At the recent Tepeyac Hill dedication in Oklahoma City, members of the Catholic clergy left buckets of pink roses at the foot of the statue of Our Lady installed on hill on the shrine campus.

Mayra Hernandez and her son Abraham, 18 months, both clutched red roses in their hands, hoping for an opportunity to lay them at the feet of Our Lady. Hernandez said she and her family, which included her husband and another younger son, heard about the shrine through social media and attended the Tepeyac Hill dedication to get a glimpse of the site. She said she grew up attending Little Flower Catholic Church but had not been a regular church attendee as an adult. She said seeing the shrine and being part of the Tepeyac Hill dedication activities left her feeling inspired.

"It's neat that they did something like this here," she said of the shrine and the Tepeyac Hill recreation. "It got to me — my children are healthy, my family is complete and we are blessed. We don't attend a church, but after this, we will probably attend church here."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine: Updates after Tepeyac Hill dedication