Exactly 235 years from the day that the first Mass was celebrated in what is now Ventura, Our Lady of the Assumption Church will mark its 50th anniversary at a 5:15 p.m. Mass Aug. 15.

Cardinal Roger Mahony will preside at the celebration of the parish located near the geographic center of modern-day Ventura, a few miles east of the historic Mission San Buenaventura.

It was on Aug. 15, 1769 --- just a month after the first mission was established by Spanish missionary friars in San Diego --- that Fathers Juan Crespi and Francisco Gomez marked the Feast of the Assumption by celebrating Mass not far from the Pacific Ocean in what would become one of the archdiocese's most idyllic resort communities (and now a rapidly growing city). A mural on the church's outside wall depicts the first Mass.

The parish church actually preceded by three months the establishment of the parish, dedicated and blessed by Cardinal James Francis McIntyre on Aug. 22, 1954, after having begun construction in 1952 when it was a parochial mission of Mission San Buenaventura. Among its prominent features was a 28-foot-tall mural of the Assumption, located above the altar and created by Millard Sheets, one of America's foremost artists and professor at Claremont College.

Father (later Msgr.) Daniel Hurley, who had been pastor at San Buenaventura, became the founding pastor of the new parish, located on Telegraph Road adjacent to what is now St. Bonaventure High School.

Our Lady of the Assumption School was opened in September 1957. The current parish pastor is Father Michael Jennett. A series of stained glass artwork by liturgical artists Isabel Piczek depicts the nine California missions founded by Blessed Junípero Serra.