In the shadow of angels

Inside the nearly 130-year-old, deconsecrated St. Vibiana's Cathedral, the baptismal certificates and everything else Catholic have long been carted away. When I came to live here last year, there were still the dusty outlines of the Stations of the Cross running the length of the cathedral, but a film crew has since painted the walls and even those shadows are gone. The stained-glass windows have been removed, and clear daylight pours across the empty sanctuary onto the mosaic floor. Waves of earthen colors lap toward what remains of the marble altar.

The church may be gone, but in the bare cathedral, it feels like faith lingers, a city of people who brought their children, their marriage, their ancestors for baptism, blessing, burial since the 1880s.

I've seen stray cats dart through a broken vent under the cathedral, but birds own this place. Two sparrows cavort the length of the nave, then either crash, or have a fight, or mate, high at the golden capital of a column. The sparrows wake the pigeons, and one after another, they fly in an unhurried way under the vaulted ceiling and out the half-moon windows to the garden.

The cathedral, rectory and gardens span the block just south of City Hall. Five of us -- Lupe, Perri, Hal, Patrick and I -- live in the rectory, in rooms that once belonged to priests and the cardinal. There are five floors with dozens of unused rooms; the rectory is a labyrinth of doors and hallways. You turn a corner and find yourself in a room with nothing but racks of old keys, a deserted dining room with impeccably hand-stitched curtains now gray with age, a wine cellar with rolled-up maps in the slanted racks. Let the wrong door shut behind you and you are locked in an enclosed courtyard with a gurgling fountain, overgrown fan palms, wild orchids and the sparrows.