SAN FRANCISCO?THE 156 year-old Church of St. Patrick?s on Mission Street in the downtown area is still basically Irish.

It carries the name of the Irish patron, his stained-glass image towering over the main altar. It?s one of many St. Patrick images scattered in the church, whose marble interior has also kept the Irish national colors of green, white, and gold.

The clerestory windows depict key events in pre-Christianity Ireland. The two secondary altars with marble images of Mary and Joseph are surrounded by icons of 16 Irish saints?Brendan of Kerry, Grellan of Hymaine and Lawrence O?Toole of Dublin, to name three.

It seems an alien environment for Filipino Catholics, but wait. Amid the stream of images of Irish Catholicism are icons very familiar to hundreds of Pinoys residing near St. Patrick?s in the South of Market area (Soma).

Close to the main entrance is a towering image of the Black Nazarene in a red velvet robe, carrying a huge cross. Not far from the high altar are images of Sto. Niño de Cebu and the first Filipino saint Lorenzo Ruiz.

St. Patrick?s is not an exclusively ?Irish? church, after all - at least, not anymore. Over the years, Filipino Catholics have gradually ?Filipinized? it, especially after the Irish brothers began leaving Soma for better living conditions outside the city. Since then St. Patrick?s has become a church most frequented by Filipino believers. Some compatriots even consider it the Bay Area?s Quiapo church.

Still the dominant culture

Apparently not wanting to alienate the rest of St. Patrick?s flock?Hispanics and Americans, in particular? its pastor Fr. Ed Dura is quick to clarify that the parish remains ?universal,? a church for all.

?It?s a church for everybody,? he says in an interview. ?It just so happened that the dominant culture (among the parishioners) is Filipino.?

Indeed, communal worship is never about ?turf wars,? even if Catholics in some parishes in southern California have inadvertently grouped themselves according to race. Much to its pastor?s discomfort, St. Patrick?s is seen by many as a ?Filipino? church.

The perception is not without basis. Of St. Patrick?s around 300 registered parishioners, the majority are Filipino, says Father Dura. His assistant Fr. Noel Laput says the number of churchgoers is actually larger since many others have yet to register. To his mind, many of these Filipinos may have brought with them the mentality ?back home? that they don?t have to sign up to belong to a particular parish, a common practice in the Catholic Church in the United States.

The sheer number of Filipino parishioners is overwhelming, especially during first Sundays of the month when a Mass is celebrated in Tagalog. They also come in full force on Tuesdays, St. Patrick?s own ?Simbang Baclaran,? and for other devotions popular among Filipinos.

Father Dura admits that if not for Filipino Catholics in its fold, the church would have been a prime candidate for closure like many US parishes in the ?90s. In this respect St. Patrick?s owes much of its continuing existence to them.

?Just imagine if you remove the Filipinos here,? he points out, ?how many of the parishioners would be left??

All-Pinoy household

In that remote possibility, the entire pastoral household would require nothing short of an overhaul. Besides Fathers Dura and Noel, who run the parish along with the Indian Fr. Charles Puthota, you?d have to find a replacement for Sister Nora Legaspi, who handles finance.

Then there are Sister Lourdes Pilapil, who?s in charge of religious education; Jun Alvar, the pianist; and Elizabeth Lagade, secretary and receptionist. Even the 74-year-old cook, Leona Barlolong, and janitor Crispin Sodario are Filipino. ?Nanay? does the laundry and she?s Filipino too.

In all, there are around 300 Filipinos doing volunteer work for St. Patrick?s as lectors, commentators, altar servers, ministers, choir members, ushers?any work that keeps the parish going.

The so-called ?Filipinization? of St. Patrick?s is anything but a conscious takeover, however. It?s unlike the ?Filipinization? of parishes in Spanish-era Philippines when members of the local clergy and their flock demanded wider participation in church affairs and bureaucracy.

From immigrant to immigrant

What instead happened in St. Patrick?s was a natural turnover of parish management and communal devotion from one set of immigrants to another. Never was there any real discord between Irish and Filipinos who found spiritual refuge in the same church.

St. Patrick?s was founded on June 9, 1851 by Fr. John Maginnis, himself a part of the huge population of Irish immigrants then settling in San Francisco?s newly formed diocese, according to its official, 88-page history booklet.

In the 1950s a century later, a new set of immigrants from Southeast Asia began flocking to the city. A favorite first stop among these Filipinos was Soma because of its proximity to job opportunities in San Francisco.

For this new group still struggling at rootedness, the Irish-run church between the Third and Fourth Streets on Mission Street provided a welcome spiritual base. Soon they were friends with the Irish, especially Msgr. Clement McKenna, the pastor for nearly 20 years.

?Very close to Filipinos,? he encouraged expressions of Filipino piety as practiced in the Philippines. Father Dura says the Irish pastor welcomed popular Filipino devotions to the Sto. Niño, the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Fatima.

McKenna?s successors were just as accommodating, gladly obliging when Filipinos asked to bring icons of their faith to St. Patrick?s. There was also an all-Filipino choir named Pag-asa (hope) way before St. Patrick?s Filipino pastor, Msgr. Fred Bitanga, took over.

?The Irish understood the spiritual needs of the Filipino people,? Father Dura says.

Story of Mang Joe

How important is faith to Filipinos in San Francisco?

Mang Joe, a church volunteer in his 70s, found life worth living again because of it. A ?bum? for many years, he was no different from the number of greasy Americans lined up on Mission Street, often drunk and begging for alms.

Little is known about him, except that he?s a war veteran-turned-vagrant. No one among his fellow parishioners knew for sure how he ended up in the cold streets of San Francisco. He wasn?t the type to volunteer his life story or his misery.

They can only say that one day Mang Joe?s endless wandering led him to the steps of St. Patrick?s. Encouraged by the warm welcome of his compatriots, he found a home in the church and stayed.

He?s still the silent type, but is quietly active in parish activities, foremost as altar server and parish handyman. One gets the idea of his sorry past only when he stops by vagrants and offers them help. ?He feels for them because he used to be one of them,? says Sister Lourdes.

Story of ?Teng?

Faith too kept Estella ?Teng? Sullivan, another church volunteer, going.

A medical technologist in a government hospital in the Philippines for 17 years, she came to San Francisco in 1993 upon the prodding of her older sister, a certified nursing assistant here. As single-mother of a 17-year-old boy, Teng needed a higher-paying job to prepare for her son?s college education.

Her P6,000 (roughly $150) monthly salary and meager extra as an encyclopedia and real estate agent back home apparently weren?t enough to support her child. So she tried her luck in the so-called land of opportunity that was the United States.

She found that, but her jobs triggered a former medical professional?s bitter internal struggle for self-respect. She wanted to pursue a similar career in the US, but had to wait. Her Philippine experience practically amounted to nothing on the American corporate ladder. Employers demanded ?local experience so she had to start from scratch.

In her hunt for a real laboratory work, she landed jobs at a care home and electronics shop. She became a security guard too. Though such jobs offered ?high? salary compared with Philippine standards back then, the professional in her was not appeased. She was not alone in her sentiment.

At the security agency where she worked, most of the employees were Filipinos. They were engineers, teachers, and accountants back home. One of them used to be a lieutenant colonel in the Philippine military.

?I had to swallow my pride,? she recalls. ?But all the while, I was focused on becoming a medical technologist here.?

Then she discovered meaning in her new life in San Francisco in the company of fellow parishioners at St. Patrick?s. ?In moments of despair, I held on to my faith and the Lord kept me going,? she says.

She joined the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Fatima groups, and later headed the team of usherettes. Today she?s also part of the San Francisco Organizing Project, a non-government advocacy group. She?s the point person for St. Patrick?s on issues regarding Filipino underemployment.

Sullivan?s long awaited a career break came in 2002 when she was hired at the hematology department of the prestigious University of California. Two years later, she passed the test for clinical laboratory scientists. After 11 years of patient waiting, she?s now a full-fledged medical technologist.

St. Patrick?s has been to Mang Joe and Teng Sullivan what it has always been to hundreds of other parishioners: a refuge for the weary, a home for the immigrant soul. And thanks to the Irish, Filipino Catholics found their church, their place in San Francisco.

This article is part of a series of Filipino migration stories the author is doing for the University of San Francisco?s Center for the Pacific Rim under the Yuchengco Fellows Program for Young Professionals in the Media.