Cathedral opening clouded by controversy

It's not every day a new Catholic cathedral opens, much less one that cost $200m and counting.

But yesterday's inauguration of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles was more than a rare moment of church glorification. It was clouded by controversy, not only over the bill but the promotional instincts of America's most divisive pastoral leader.

Roger Mahony, LA's Cardinal Archbishop, led a grand ceremony of more than 550 clerics at the vast new structure – a forbidding monolith in creamy yellow that has been uncharitably compared with a prison. But outside a small group of protesters demanded to know how the Church is going to pay the bill and when Cardinal Mahony is going to start answering painful questions about the sex abuse scandal enveloping his archdiocese, like so many others in America. Plans for the new cathedral have been underway ever since an earthquake made the 200-year-old St Vibiana's, unusable seven years ago. Originally, Cardinal Mahony wanted to knock down the old structure and build the new cathedral on the same site but he was blocked by LA's conservancy movement, at which point a new site was selected and the costs began to soar, from an original $45m to the incomplete estimate of $193m (£125m).

The archdiocese is already reeling from the cost – cutting its budget by up to 30 per cent for services such as education. And more financial punishment could be on the way from a flurry of lawsuits alleging that Cardinal Mahony deliberately covered up the sex abuse activities of his priests and, in some case, promoted the perpetrators.

Seventy two current and former priests are under criminal investigation.