The goal is to raise $100 million from 62 Catholic parishes and centers in Orange County, said Hank Evers, the director of development and communications for the Orange Catholic Foundation, a nonprofit fundraising arm of the diocese.
About half of the money will go toward the renovation and support of the soon-to-be Christ Cathedral, now the Crystal Cathedral.
The diocese bought the church and its surrounding campus in a bankruptcy-court-ordered sale.
The rest of the funds raised will support other interests of the diocese, including education and priest retirements, Evers said.Cynthia Bobruk, the foundation's executive director, said a typical annual appeal to parishioners raises about $12 million.
"This will be the largest effort and the first one on behalf of the diocese," Bobruk said.
The campaign will begin in 2013, last about a year and a half and allow donors to spread out making good on their pledges over three to five years, Bobruk said.
Local Catholic leaders are looking toward their new cathedral to both unite the 1.2 million Catholics in Orange County and to reach out to others across the country and world. This week, a number of Catholic leaders said they see the iconic cathedral complex as a magnet that will draw parishioners.
The Catholic Church takes over the 34-acre campus next June, when the Crystal Cathedral Ministries moves to the St. Callistus Catholic Church site. The St. Callistus congregation will swap places with the financially troubled Crystal Cathedral Ministries.
Once dedicated, the Christ Cathedral will be the largest Catholic cathedral in the country.
But that is at least two and a half to three years away, the time needed for the renovations, said Rob Neal, interim chief operating officer of the Christ Catholic Cathedral Corporation charged with the governance of the campus.
Meanwhile, plans are in the works to transfer the St. Callistus congregation to the Crystal Cathedral. And the county's Catholic leaders are looking for designers and architects who will help convert the Protestant megachurch built by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller into a Catholic place of worship.
The cathedral needs to install some basic items before the structure can be dedicated as a Roman Catholic Cathedral: a central altar, a bishop's chair, a tabernacle to house the Blessed Sacrament and a baptistry and baptismal font.
Some of the work will include installing air conditioning in the Arboterum building and possibly the Crystal Cathedral itself, Neal said. There also is earthquake retrofitting to be done.
Overall, renovating the Crystal Cathedral to make it a Catholic place of worship will come with a smaller price tag than building a new structure, Catholic leaders said.
In 2005, the Diocese bought a property in Santa Ana and established the Christ Our Savior parish with the idea that it would build a cathedral there to replace the 850-seat Holy Family Cathedral in Orange.
Plans were "well under way" when the Crystal Cathedral Ministries entered into bankruptcy court, according to a souvenir booklet from the Diocese of Orange titled "A Cathedral of Our Own."
"At first, Bishop (Tod D.) Brown was cool to the idea. The Diocese had already spent a considerable amount of money on the plans for a new cathedral," the booklet states. And the bishop "didn't want to appear to be taking advantage of the misfortunes of an ailing congregation."
When they researched what Crystal Cathedral could offer, Brown learned that the facilities on the campus "matched almost point by point what the Diocese needed, and it was thought that the cost — even with needed renovations — would still be less than half what the diocese would need to raise simply to build phase one of our planned new cathedral complex," the booklet states.
But the subject is touchy to many in the Crystal Cathedral Ministries, who feel as if they're losing their home.
The Rev. Christopher H. Smith of the Catholic Church, the episcopal vicar of the soon-to-be Christ Cathedral, said Wednesday that the biggest challenge facing the diocese in the transition "is to be sensitive to all the people affected by this move."
That includes the St. Callistus congregants who also had initial reservations about leaving their home church site, Smith said. "Now, there is growing excitement," Smith said.
Schuller founded the Crystal Cathedral Ministries some 50 years ago and catapulted it to a worldwide ministry through his "Hour of Power" television program.
Schuller endorsed the Catholic Church's purchase of the building during the bankruptcy. Last spring, Schuller and his wife, Arvella, separated from the church he created.
In June, Schuller addressed a group of visiting priests at the Cathedral and thanked them for taking over the facility "for the glory of God."
A video of his appearance was shown to visiting bishops during a tour of the Crystal Cathedral on Wednesday.
"I trust it to you," Schuller told the visiting priests.
The Catholic Church paid $57.5 million for the Crystal Cathedral. By comparison, the last building erected on the campus was the Welcome Center, which cost approximately $47 million, Neal said.
The seven buildings on the campus, if built today, could cost $300 million to construct, Neal estimated.
That does not include the price of the land.
The money spent, Catholic leaders said, will be a worthwhile investment.
"The Catholic Church doesn't think about years or decades. It thinks about centuries," Neal said. "This cathedral will be one of the most significant properties in the Catholic world."