The Grace of Everyday Saints
How a Band of Believers Lost Their Church and Found Their Faith
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Including interviews with dozens of parishioners, this story of the battle for St. Brigid is “a dramatic David vs. Goliath account of a church under siege” (Kirkus Reviews).
St. Brigid Church was one of San Francisco’s great landmarks in the early 1990s. The church itself had weathered depressions and natural disasters, epic earthquakes and a massive fire. Its loyal congregation was active, vibrant, and growing. But in 1993, without warning, the Catholic archdiocese mysteriously ordered its doors to be closed.
The Grace of Everyday Saints is the story of how a ragtag group of believers came together in a crusade to save their church. What they discovered would be devastating: that around the country, parishes like theirs were threatened by the higher echelons of the Church, all to hide a terrible secret. Soon there were near-daily headlines that shocked the world. But still this unlikely group of heroes—led by a renegade lawyer, a reformed Catholic, and an antiestablishment priest—continued to meet weekly, to fight, to prove that their beloved St. Brigid was worth saving.
A dramatic narrative that takes readers from the streets of San Francisco to the halls of the Vatican, The Grace of Everyday Saints is about injustice and betrayal, redemption and grace.
“A gripping story.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this David versus Goliath narrative, award-winning San Francisco Chronicle reporter Julian Guthrie tells the story of a small group of everyday Catholics who dared for more than a decade to challenge the official Roman Catholic hierarchy's decision to close their historic parish church, St. Brigid, in San Francisco. The diocese insisted the closure was a response to the expense of repairs to an aging church and declining membership. But as parishioners dug deeper, they gradually discovered a darker set of motives. Describing machinations going all the way to the top tiers of the Vatican, Guthrie suggests that St. Brigid, sitting on a valuable piece of San Francisco real estate and with $700,000 in cash in the bank, was targeted for liquidation to pay for the hidden crimes of priests. A gripping story with a compelling if somewhat complicated cast of characters, this book paints lay Catholics as heroes and is unlikely to be popular with the Catholic hierarchy.
