Courtesy photo

Thomas Aquinas College is sending this cornerstone to Rome for a papal blessing.

Thomas Aquinas College is sending the 700-pound cornerstone of its new chapel to Rome for the pope's blessing.

The limestone block will be blessed Sept. 3 at St. Peter's Basilica, just after the pope's weekly general audience.

"As a Catholic institution, we wanted to symbolize our devotion to the church and the teaching of the church," said Thomas Dillon, president of the Catholic college in Santa Paula. "We're making a statement in stone."

The cornerstone, housed in a special crate, is leaving for Rome on Monday. It will travel by truck from Indiana, where it was quarried and engraved, to Chicago; then by air to Italy; and finally by truck to the Vatican for its blessing by Pope Benedict XVI.

Cost for the transportation, which Dillon did not want to reveal, is being covered by a donation from a student's parents.

This will be the second papal blessing that Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel has received. When the chapel was still being designed, the project was blessed by Pope John Paul II.

"It was designed under one pope and built under the other," Dillon said.

The chapel, which is meant to be the physical and spiritual center of the campus, is modeled on a 13th-century Florentine cathedral. Architectural features include a bell tower, Italian marble floor, ornate plasterwork, and high windows to let in plenty of natural light.

Most of the exterior has been completed, except for Italian marble statues of the Virgin Mary, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, said Peter DeLuca, vice president for finance and administration.

Limestone is only a veneer on the chapel, which is built of concrete and steel to meet earthquake standards, DeLuca said. So the cornerstone, which will be placed on the bottom of the facade, is primarily symbolic.

"Modern buildings aren't made of stone," DeLuca said. "This is something you put in at the end. It doesn't actually hold up the building."

The chapel will be dedicated March 7, the anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony is scheduled to preside.

The cost of the project is $22 million. The cornerstone holds a capsule with a list of more than 2,300 contributors.

Dillon plans to attend the blessing ceremony in Rome, along with Maria Grant, chairwoman of the college's board of governors, and other board members and their spouses. Richard Grant, executive director of the Dan Murphy Foundation, a primary benefactor of the college, also will attend.