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.

Newly retired Woodside Fire Protection District Chief Dan Ghiorso admits to some parallels between fighting fires and the priesthood, a vocation he discerned for a time as a young man. But he thinks the path he chose was probably the easier one.

Fridays won’t be the same for a small community of Marin County Catholics. The Catholic Marin Breakfast Club, founded by a local parishioner in 1994 to bring local Catholics together one Friday morning a month for Mass, a speaker of interest to the faithful and breakfast, gathered for a final time on May 3 at St. Sebastian Church in Greenbrae.

As Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned and it was unclear if the great church would survive, a family at St. Philip the Apostle Parish in San Francisco’s Noe Valley took action, ringing the church bell in hope and solidarity as the fire raged.

“On the Street Where You Live” has appeared in every issue of Catholic San Francisco during its now 20 years of publication. My love of the theater and its music is what led me to suggest the title, grabbing the idea from “My Fair Lady’s” Freddy Eynsford-Hill solo of the same name. The product of the number of CSF issues until now times the usual word count of Street puts me at having the pleasure and opportunity so far to gab here 600,000 words worth. Sad to say, especially for me, that’s where the number will stay for a bit as I move into a period of disability having been diagnosed with cancer. The doctors are hopeful and so am I.