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Something like a close cousin, St. Joseph the Worker Church fits right into the heart of Berkeley. The church is a reflection of a community with a unique history and strong commitment to social justice and equality. 

  Founded around the same time, the city and St. Joseph’s have now been together for 125 years. This Saturday, the church will be celebrating its birthday, and all are encouraged to come out and remember its legacy. 

  St. Joseph the Worker might be most well-known for its beloved priest Father Bill O’Donnell, who amassed a protest arrest record that rivals the many other well-known Berkeley activists. 

  But the legacy of St. Joseph doesn’t start with Father Bill. Since its founding, St. Joseph has been committed to the kind of principles that are associated with Berkeley.  

  St. Joseph originally started as a convent and school for girls founded by Mother Mary Teresa Comerford in 1878. With a growing Catholic population in the area, it was necessary to have more than a school to minister to the community’s religious needs. As a result, Mother Teresa invited Father Pierce M. Comerford, her brother, from Ireland to come and be the pastor for a newly established church connected to the school.  

  The church structure was quickly built, and began to hold services for a diverse Catholic community primarily made up of immigrants from Ireland, Chile, France, Germany, Portugal and Canada. A school for boys was also started in the same early period. 

  While the community attended mass together, their children all went to school together, and a close knit community centered around the church began to form. 

  “The school was a large part of the integration of those groups into the parish,” explains Father George E. Crespin, the church’s current priest. “From very early on it was a very diverse community, unconsciously diverse. There has been a diverse community long before diversity became a quality to be touted.” 

  Over the years, the church has continued to attract such widespread and varied groups to its parish. Large groups of African American from heavily-Catholic southern Louisiana and East Texas came to the Bay Area during World War II and soon joined. In the 1970s the influx of Mexican, Central and South American immigrants also made St. Joseph’s their main church. 

  St. Joseph’s diversity and success is not just luck, however. Since its founding, the church has had a commitment to the community and a strong leadership that have turned into Berkeley’s flagship church.  

  St. Joseph’s has always viewed itself as a community organization of sorts as well as a church, according to Father Crespin.  

“This parish really is home to me,” said Norma Gray, who has lived in Berkeley since 1936. Starting with her husband, who went to the school, Gray has raised 10 children who have also gone to the school, and she has sung in or led the church choir since 1944.  

  “It was so good to raise [my kids] here,” she said. “You didn’t need to get along, you just did.” 

  And while the beloved Father Bill O’Donnell might be the most well-known priest to lead St. Joseph’s, the lineage of priests is equally noteworthy. At least one of the other notable priests was Father Patrick Galvan, who started in 1951. During his time, Father Galvan saw rapid increases in the number of immigrants and helped shape a church that they could call home.  

  Gray said he was also known for hanging out with Free Speech activist Mario Savio, who lived next door. 

  “I don’t think it changed either of their minds,” said Gray about the conversations Savio and Father Galvan used to have about politics and the different worlds they came from. 

  And of course, no one more than Father Bill O’Donnell helped shape St. Joseph as the community now knows it. A committed activist, community figure and religious leader, many say Father Bill is the unofficial saint of Berkeley.  

During his lifetime he notched over 240 arrests on his record for his participation in various protests. His list of involvements, like his police record, was long, including work with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the Farm Worker’s movement, his work in Central America, the Middle East, the anti-Apartheid and anti-nuclear movements, and at Georgia’s Fort Benning, home to what was formerly known as the School of the Americas. Activists have charged that the school teaches torture tactics to foreign police personnel. 

Father Bill’s recent death attested to his reach in the community, as thousands poured out to remember and celebrate his life. 

Today, Father Bill’s legacy and the legacy of the church carry on. With a growing Latino population the church holds a separate mass in Spanish, a tradition Father Bill started and one that Father Crespin proudly carries on. The school continues to flourish, although it is in the process of raising money for repairs. The parish continues to open its doors to the community with several organizations such as the church’s social justice committee. 

“I think what we’re trying to emphasize is the history,” said Father Crespin about the upcoming birthday celebration. “It’s honoring that faith, that commitment. It’s celebrating what is unique to us, the strong commitment to education, the living out in very practical ways [the idea] of diversity and more recently the commitment to social justice.” 

St. Joseph the Worker encourages all to attend its birthday mass which will be held Saturday May 1 at the church at 4:30 p.m. After the mass there will be a celebration at the Double Tree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina, with a no-host bar at 6:30 p.m. and dinner at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and information about the mass and or the dinner, contact the church at 843-2244.  

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