The

Grace
of Everyday
Saints
How a Band
of Believers
Lost Their
Church and
Found Their
Faith

JULIAN
GUTHRIE
 THE
GR ACE
OF
EVERYDAY
SAINTS
✦

JULIAN GUTHRIE

houghton mifflin harcourt

boston ✦ new york
2011
 Copyright © 2011 by Julian Guthrie

all rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections

from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guthrie, Julian.
The grace of everyday saints : how a band of believers lost
their church and found their faith / Julian Guthrie.
p. cm.
isbn 978-0-547-13304-1
1. St. Brigid Catholic Church (San Francisco, Calif.) — History.
2. San Francisco (Calif.) — Church history. I. Title.
bx4603.s5g88 2011
282'.7946109049 — dc22
2010049819

Book design by Boskydell Design

Printed in the United States of America

doc 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Introduction • ix

I • FA I T H • 1

II • SUFFERING • 85

III • R E V E L AT I O N • 175

Epilogue • 257
Author’s Note • 264
Acknowledgments • 265
 Introduction

T
he story of St. Brigid began for me one morning
in December 2004, when I was driving along one of San
Francisco’s busiest thoroughfares. Stopped at a light, I saw
a small white candle burning on the front steps of a Catholic
church. Surrounding it were bouquets of beautiful fresh flowers.
The church’s name was St. Brigid.
Taking the same route home night after night, I saw the can-
dle burning there on the steps. Over time, I came to learn that
the Romanesque building erected more than a century before by
Irish immigrants had been closed a decade earlier by an archdio-
cese in turmoil. I learned that parishioners had kept the candle
burning since the night they were locked out of the place they
loved. They met every Tuesday night in the basement of a nearby
Russian Orthodox church that had offered them sanctuary. They
gathered each week, without fail, to discuss how to reopen St.
Brigid.
I was drawn into the story of this church and its believers.
The parishioners had waged a quiet crusade for all this time
and showed no signs of giving up. I began attending the group’s
weekly meetings and was charmed by the innocence of the
St. Brigid faithful. They had come to San Francisco from across
the globe — from Burma, China, Mexico, Ireland, Colombia, the
Philippines — and seemed to be from another era, one devoid of
x ✦ Introduction

celebrity- and attention-seekers, one filled with simple desires

and acts of goodness.
I remember smiling as I listened to an elderly woman sug-
gest they hold bake sales in the parking lot to raise money — even
though the costs to upgrade the church were said to be in the
millions of dollars. The parishioners talked of picketing at rush
hour, armed with rosaries and signs: we love st. brigid and
help us reopen our church. They talked of writing to the
pope and reminded one another to send birthday cards to the
archbishop. There was a quiet rhythm to the meetings, beginning
with the praying of the rosary and ending with coffee, cookies,
and catching up.
On the surface, this sort of devotion may seem normal. Church-
goers across the country are remarkably committed to their own
houses of worship, helping out with everything from construc-
tion and repairs to teaching Sunday school and volunteering in
the front office.
But the story of St. Brigid and its parishioners is so much more.
Their struggle takes them from a sunlit sanctuary in San Francisco
to the steps of the Vatican in Rome. It involves private investiga-
tors, attacks and counterattacks, the pursuit of truth and the ex-
posure of lies. It unfolds as one of the darkest periods in the two-
thousand-year history of the Catholic Church, pitting laity against
clergy, faith against doctrine. And the darkness descends on the
people of St. Brigid before it hits Catholics worldwide, opening
eyes here and upending ways of life and systems of belief.
Full of twists and turns, tragedy and triumph, the story of St.
Brigid is replete with lovable characters who are funny and flawed,
humble and heroic, and with leaders who are dramatic in their
differences. One leads with his soul, the next with his mind, the
last with his heart. All are changed by the battle. The first, a young
Irish priest, risked his collar to fight for the life of St. Brigid; the
second, a fiery death-penalty attorney from the South, endured
the trial of his life; the third, a lapsed Catholic, was forced to con-
front his painful — and secret — past.
Introduction ✦ xi

Their saga represents the longest parish protest in Catholic

America. In many ways, the epic fight waged from one corner of
San Francisco is a microcosm for the struggles of Catholics today:
There is the beauty and resiliency of everyday believers versus the
ossified problems of a well-meaning institution. There is the for-
giveness of the followers contrasted to the denial and silence of
those who lead.
Working on this book has made me think of the places we hold
sacred. Everyone has somewhere, some corner of the world, worth
holding on to. For me, it is a winding dirt road around the lake
in Idaho where I spent summers growing up. When I go home to
visit my family, I can’t wait to head out on a jog along the road,
its towering pines framing the glistening lake. It is where I can
find — inexplicably — peace.
I never imagined I would write a book about a group of Cath-
olics trying to save a church. I was brought up in a family that at-
tended an Episcopal church a few times a year. My dad, Wayne,
liked the sunrise service on Easter. My mom, Connie, enjoyed the
candlelight spectacle on Christmas. The thing I remember most
about church has nothing to do with a sermon or priest or pretty
building. It has more to do with the small moments, the single
interactions. What I remember most is my dad’s terrible sing-
ing. I inherited his inability to sing on key, so we would sing fear-
lessly and boisterously until we glanced at each other and broke
into laughter. Recently, about a year after my father died, I went
to an Easter service at Grace Cathedral, a magnificent Episcopal
church on San Francisco’s Nob Hill. When it came time to sing,
I launched into the hymn. In that moment, something happened
that I’ll never forget: I felt my father’s presence. He was to my
right, singing, smiling, and looking so happy, when the end of his
life was anything but. He was there with me, healthy and hand-
some. Truly with me. I wondered later if I was blessed with that
moment in church because I was somehow more receptive there,
if my mind slowed and my heart opened.
The story of these parishioners’ quest to hold on to their sa-
xii ✦ Introduction

cred place is for believers and nonbelievers alike. For, in a world

that can seem increasingly isolating, this story asks: Where do we
find community? Importantly, it asks: What in your life is worth
fighting for?
Recent polls show that an astounding 92 percent of Americans
believe in God. Yet faith is not a part of everyday conversations,
even among close friends. For me, and I hope for readers, this
book opens the door to that kind of conversation.
I have spent six years now learning about the faithful from St.
Brigid. I have been invited into their homes and meetings. I have
attended their birthday parties, anniversaries — and their funer-
als. I have seen them work in obscurity and watched them seize
the spotlight. And I have seen them come back from defeat after
defeat. I was there, too, when they lost one of their own — when
tragedy ended a vibrant life.
What has struck me most, though, is that these are every-
day people who represent the best in humanity. They believe in
something bigger than themselves, and they are never going to let
go — despite the powerful opposition and despite the appearance
of getting nowhere. Through their years of wandering, layers of
rejection, and unthinkable betrayals, they do not believe that they
have lost. For them, too much was gained along the way.
As the Irish priest involved in their struggle told me: “They
have the spirit of fighters, the grace of saints.”
Over the years of reporting this story — first for a series that
ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, where I work as a journal-
ist, and now for this book — one other image has been especially
powerful. It is something that says everything about love and
faith, about deeds over words. It is something I happened upon,
like the burning candle on the church’s front steps. In this case,
what remains with me is the devotion of a certain housepainter,
who continued to physically care for St. Brigid long after it was
closed.
When I first met him, he declined even to give his name, say-
ing he didn’t want any recognition. Slowly he warmed up, apol-
Introduction ✦ xiii

ogizing for his paint-splattered coveralls. I learned that he lived

three blocks away from St. Brigid and carried his equipment to
the steps of the church.
“I’ve always figured if the church looked loved, it would be
harder to keep it closed,” he said of his work, which on this day
involved sanding one of the church’s three main doors.
Over the years, he shared stories of his happiest times attend-
ing St. Brigid with his only son. It was the place where the sin-
gle dad connected with his shy boy. Working on St. Brigid was
the place where old memories were exposed for him — memories
of attending Mass with his wife, who would laugh aloud at the
kneel-sit-kneel-sit motions. She was a nonpracticing Jew and
found the Catholic traditions farcical. After their divorce, and af-
ter the housepainter finally got his life together, his son started
spending weekends with him. Mass was something the two of
them shared, something that was just theirs. Often, they would
walk home talking about Bible passages mentioned during Mass,
thinking of how the writings were relevant to their lives.
Although he had volunteered in the spring of 1994 to picket
during the morning rush hour, holding signs that he’d made
himself, he hadn’t attended committee meetings. He preferred to
operate alone, either reflecting on good or not-so-good times or
listening to country music on his transistor radio. He tended to
different parts of the church but took special pride in the doors.
To him, they represented dark and light: dark when St. Brigid was
closed at midnight on June 30, 1994, and light when they would
one day be pulled open again.
He liked to work in the silence of an early morning or cloaked
in fog late at night. He would take time to admire things like the
ornamental archway carved in stone and to study the limestone
statues by Ireland’s great sculptor Seamus Murphy, which de-
picted the faces of his country’s Easter uprising of 1916.
He told me stories about encounters with homeless people
and skateboarders who had encamped on the front steps. And he
talked of the occasional interaction he had with passersby. One
xiv ✦ Introduction

morning when he was refinishing a door, a man and a woman at

the base of the church tried to get his attention. Reluctantly, he
stepped down off the ladder.
“Can people get married in this church?” the man wanted to
know.
“It’s closed,” the housepainter replied.
“Why are you fixing the door if it’s closed?” the man asked.
The housepainter smiled slightly, revealing a crooked grin. He
pointed to the sky and said, “God.”