The Crystal Cathedral is a church building of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in Garden Grove, Orange County, California, in the United States. The reflective glass building, designed by postmodern American architect Philip Johnson, seats 2,736 people. The church was “touted as the largest glass building in the world when it was completed in 1981”. The building has one of the largest musical instruments in the world, the Hazel Wright Memorial organ.
Until 2013, the building had been the principal place of worship for Crystal Cathedral Ministries (now Shepherd’s Grove), a congregation of the Reformed Church in America, founded in 1955 by Robert H. Schuller. Crystal Cathedral Ministries filed for bankruptcy in October 2010 and in February 2012 sold the building and its adjacent campus to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange for use as the diocese’s new cathedral. The building, especially the interior, is currently being renovated to accommodate the Roman Catholic liturgy and is due to re-open in early 2019, at which time it is expected to be consecrated and formally renamed Christ Cathedral and become the seat of the Diocese of Orange.