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Leaders of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County are pictured after the April 12 blessing of a new prayer and meditation room for formerly incarcerated women at the agency’s Catherine Center in San Mateo. The room was made possible by the Menlo Church, a neighboring evangelical church. From left are Mercy Sister Marguerite Buchanan; executive director of the SVdP of San Mateo County Jim Lonergan; Mercy Sister Suzanne Toolan; former SVdP executive director Lorraine Moriarty; retired Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice; chaplain Martin Schurr; Catherine Center program director Vivian Clausing. (Courtesy photo)
Neighbors helping neighbors:
New Catherine Center prayer room built by local evangelicals
June 17, 2019
Christina Gray
Formerly incarcerated women hoping to turn their lives around at the St. Vincent de Paul of San Mateo County’s Catherine Center can now retreat to an in-house prayer and meditation room thanks to the generosity and goodwill of a local evangelical Presbyterian church.
“We always wanted a prayer room,” SVdP executive director Jim Lonergan told Catholic San Francisco.
The Catherine Center is a residential safe house in San Mateo for women recently released from prison. It’s a joint venture of the Sisters of Mercy headquartered in Burlingame and the SVdP of San Mateo County’s restorative justice ministry. The home offers residents of the yearlong program an opportunity to put their past behind them through staff-guided spiritual and emotional development.
Lonergan said residents and staff had “made do” by finding quiet spaces for prayer within the walls of Catherine Center until the Menlo Church, which does a volunteer project every year asked, “What do you need?”
The SVdP envisioned a former storage space at Catherine Center being converted into a prayer room.
“They went back and prayed on it and so did we,” Lonergan said. “Sure enough it became a reality.”
The new space was blessed April 12 by retired Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice.
Menlo Church, founded in 1873 as Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, provided the time, labor, materials and covered the costs for the project and refurbished some pews and a pulpit Catherine Center had in storage.
In the blessing, Lonergan and the Sisters of Mercy expressed their gratitude to their Menlo Church neighbors for making the new sacred space possible.
“It’s a really nice Holy Spirit-filled prayer space,” he said.
ST. HILARY ‘ANGELS’: Gabriel Project “angels” showered a local family with new items for their new baby boy at a shower held at St. Hilary Parish in Tiburon May 26. The parents of Naum, who was born in January, were surrounded by love and baby products supplied by the parish’s Gabriel Project volunteer angels. The Gabriel Project is a parish-based ministry to support pregnant mothers in need and their unborn children.
Katrina, center, and baby boy Naum with a St. Hilary’s Gabriel Project ministry “angel,” who helped throw a shower for the new mother May 26 in Tiburon.
50 HAPPY YEARS: Congratulations are in order for Santo and Grace Moscuzza. The longtime parishioners of Our Lady of Loretto Parish in Novato celebrate 50 years of marriage this year, according to daughter Anna Voltattorni, who proudly sent us her parents’ wedding photo from 1969 along with a current photo. Grace Gauci grew up in the Portola District of San Francisco and attended St. Elizabeth School and Notre Dame High School. She met the love of her life, Santo Moscuzza, a native of Sicily, at Fugazi Hall in North Beach. They were married on Jan. 26, 1969, at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church in San Francisco. The Moscuzzas are active at OLL and the Italian Catholic Federation. Their extended family includes daughter Anna and her husband Jeff, second daughter Lisa Kersey and her husband Josh, and four grandchildren, Ryan, Gianna, Tyler and Callie.
Santo and Grace Moscuzza were married Jan. 26, 1969, at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Parish.
A LONG LIFE WELL LIVED: Evaristo “Bert” Agcaoili Albano, longtime catechist and eucharistic minister at St. Patrick’s Church in San Francisco will be missed by family, friends and fellow parishioners. Albano, 95, died May 30. A vigil was held at St. Patrick June 13 and Bert was laid to rest after a funeral Mass June 14.
During Tom Burke’s absence, email items and high-resolution images to CSF staff at csf@sfarch.org and/or mail to Street, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco 94109. Include a follow-up phone number. If requesting a calendar listing, put “Calendar” in the subject line.