During Christmas when I was a boy, my mother would take my siblings and me to one of the roughest neighborhoods in San Francisco to visit the animals that gathered there.

This was the Tenderloin neighborhood, home to drug dealers, drug users, and a sad number of homeless people.

our destination is St. Boniface Catholic Church.

According to the San Francisco Examiner, St. Boniface was founded as a parish in 1860; current structure Its predecessor was destroyed in an earthquake and fire in 1906, but it was completed in 1908.

It is operated by franciscan priest.

My mother, as mentioned in this column, I made a note of it beforetakes us to that church as the first stop on our annual tour of San Francisco’s Nativity scenes, as St. Boniface’s Nativity scene was the most impressive in the city. Not only live animals but also live humans appeared.

The Franciscan priests of St. Boniface were following in the footsteps of St. Francis. St. Francis not only founded his religious order, but also established the tradition of Nativity scenes with living creatures.

“St. Francis’ meditations on the life of Christ inspired him to create the first-ever Nativity scene in Greccio, Italy, in 1223.” The National Catholic Register reports. “…Francisco asked his friend Giovanni Verita, lord of Greccio, to prepare a cave with live animals and a manger with hay.”

In 1950, the Franciscan Order of St. Boniface began displaying a living Nativity scene.

An article published in the San Francisco Examiner on Christmas Eve 1956 described this ritual.

“The colorful ceremony, held for the sixth year in a row, began with a procession of brown-robed priests from the dark church to an adjacent schoolyard with realistic religious scenes,” the newspaper reported. “There, against a backdrop of fresh greenery, straw, and live animals, a packed house of believers knelt as a life-sized statue of the Christ Child was placed in a manger and blessed.”

The newspaper said, “Additional realistic touches were added by a shepherd who roamed the stable site and a pair of live sheep loaned by the Department of Recreation and Parks.”

“This service was revived here in 1950 as part of a similar movement to ‘bring Christ back to Christmas,'” Father Alfred Bodeker, the Franciscan pastor of St. Boniface, told the newspaper.

On Christmas Eve 1960, the Examiner reported: “A giant outdoor Nativity scene has been re-erected in the schoolyard of St. Boniface, adjacent to the church at 133 Golden Gate Avenue, complete with life-size statues of the Holy Family and visiting shepherds. also includes the living sheep and the living shepherd.”

In 1967, the Examiner carried with him a schedule of Christmas Masses to be held at St. Boniface that year. “A life-sized crib will once again occupy the entire schoolyard at Christmas time,” a notice said at the end of the schedule. “Here, next to the old California Mission, are replicas of the Bethlehem stables, live sheep, and live shepherds.”

“This is a San Francisco tradition,” the notice said.

Seventeen years later, I had the opportunity to see an even more charming Christmas site. it is church of nativity In Bethlehem.

When I was living in Egypt in 1984, I traveled to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and visited the Nativity Cave where Christ was born. While I was there, a group of Catholic bishops from ethiopia I knelt down in front of that sacred place and prayed.

When I returned to Cairo, I lived in an area called an island on the Nile River. Zamalek. This is where many diplomats lived. Many of them attended the same Catholic church that I attended, and the congregation included people from all over the world.

Although these parishioners spoke different languages ​​and were loyal to different governments, they were united by one faith.

In 2005, According to the report San Francisco’s St. Boniface Church has become a “sanctuary for homeless people,” according to SFGate.com.

“Every day, more than 100 homeless wanderers find slumber at St. Boniface, a pink-and-yellow-walled bastion of spirituality amidst the rough streets of Golden Gate Avenue near Leavenworth Street. are finding.” SFGate.com reported. “It’s thought to be the only place in America where something like this happens.”

From San Francisco’s Tenderloin to Cairo’s Zamalek and neighborhoods around the world, may this Christmas be a day of unity and peace.

Terence P. Jeffrey is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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