St. James Catholic Church - Local History

This Sunday (Oct. 9th), I attended St. James Catholic Church and played guitar in their guitar (youth) Mass. Since I have written before about St. James (Feb 20th & May 8th), I will focus this time on its local history.

The Catholic Church built St. James as the second Catholic church in Petaluma (the second Catholic parish formed). (St. Vincent's is the first), in order to serve the then growing Eastside of Petaluma. They broke ground in 1964, and dedicated the church in 1966. Fr. Charles O'Leary served as its first pastor, Fr. Michael Cleary as its second pastor, and Fr. Michael Culligan as its current pastor. Along the way, they added an educational building, a rectory, a memorial garden, and most recently a community garden called the Mary Garden. The church (parish) has grown (in members as well as ministries) along with the Eastside of Petaluma. It currently serves about 2500 families, and has regular Sunday attendance of well over 1,000 at its 5 Masses.

The archtecture of the church building reflects the adobe structure of early Petaluma settlers, and they finished the interior in redwood to reflect its placement in the redwood empire. Recently, the church tiled the floors (replacing the carpet flooring) with rich creamy swirls tiles, which improves the acoustics for the guitar (youth) Mass.