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http://snipurl.com/h919 SHAME OF THE CITY SACRED SLEEP At St. Boniface, a sanctuary for homeless people by Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle They are the lost souls of San Francisco's streets, wandering all night because they're afraid to curl up on the sidewalk or check in to a shelter. The reasons for their fear are many -- their teeth will be kicked in if they close their eyes, their bundles will be stolen, they won't wake up. Some are crazy, some are frail and old, and some are women who have too often felt fists upon their faces. Some just have to be alone when the sun goes down. So they walk. Every night. Until dusk becomes dawn. And that's when the lost homeless people of San Francisco come to St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church in the Tenderloin. It is their daytime oasis -- a quiet, dimly lit holy place where they can stretch out on the 14-inch-wide pews to snatch the shut-eye that eludes them all night, regardless of whether they are mad, filthy, stoned or coherent, clean and sober. More than 100 homeless wanderers find slumbering solace every day at St. Boniface, a pink-and-yellow-walled fortress of spirituality amid the hardscrabble street scene on Golden Gate Avenue near Leavenworth Street. It is believed to be the only place in America where this happens. Many churches let themselves be used as nighttime shelters, but no other lets the homeless sleep in its pews while its daytime functions go on all around, according to both the National Coalition on Homelessness and national Catholic officials. Some of St. Boniface's parishioners grumble that letting homeless people take over the rear two-thirds of the pews from dawn through lunchtime mass is an irritation. More say it is the essence of what Jesus would have done for the poorest of the poor. And the homeless? They are so grateful they have a term for what goes on in St. Boniface. They call it "Sacred Sleep." To walk into St. Boniface while the lost are collapsed in slumber along its aisles is to enter another world. What strikes you first are the snores - gentle, rhythmic rumblings echoing off the 103-year-old church walls and mingling with soft flute music filtering down from loudspeakers. Next, it's the sleeping mounds of bodies and blankets on the pews. Then it's the smells -- unwashed bodies, sweat, bags of half-eaten food, soggy garbage sacks doubling as duffels. It's not what you'd expect in as majestic a place as this. St. Boniface is an airy marvel of German and Italian architecture, with tan scagliola columns soaring 30 feet to a gilt-flecked ceiling where saints gaze down from murals of florid blues, greens and reds. After its $12 million renovation three years ago, it is truly a showpiece among the churches of San Francisco. But in an important way, what is happening here is really not odd at all. The ceiling saints of St. Boniface have gazed down upon those 100 snoring homeless people for nearly a year, every day from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. , and in a house of worship and nourishment to the needy soul, there may be no more appropriate use. The Rev. Louie Vitale, the church's activist Franciscan pastor, came up with the idea after despairing at the growing number of desperate people dozing on sidewalks when he unlocked the church doors in the morning. Father Louie, 72, named his brainchild The Gubbio Project, after the fable of Gubbio, a town that befriended a killer wolf with the help of St. Francis after recognizing the animal was hungry, not malicious. That the Gubbio Project started around Easter, a time of rebirth, was all too appropriate. So was the fact that this Franciscan enterprise -- funded by just $44,000 in donations -- should happen in the city of St. Francis, where so many unique crusades of the heart have begun, from the Summer of Love to the creation of refuges for people with AIDS. St. Boniface itself is no stranger to the tradition; it has long worked with next-door St. Anthony's soup kitchen and health clinic. To the outside world, the homeless who flock here are often seen just as addicts, panhandlers or criminals. Nobody knows exactly how many folks cycle in and out of those 100 spots in the pews; the only thing certain is that they come from the ranks of the 3,000 most hard-core homeless people in the city. But inside, such distinctions don't matter. Here the sleepers are merely people. Cared for, respected. Safe. For 7 1/2 hours, at least. "I had a career once, I had a life, and now I'm on the street and nobody gives a damn about me -- except this place," Denyce Alvarez, 42, says one day after shuffling block to block all night to keep warm. She sits in a middle pew arranging a bed of four moth-eaten blankets. Her face is bruised purple around the eyes and a gash on her forehead. "I was sitting at a bus stop on Eddy Street a couple nights ago and a guy just came up and started slugging me, all over," Alvarez says, starting to cry. "He was just crazy. Didn't know him." She lies down on the bench, tears coursing down her cheeks, thin body shaking. She was a paralegal years ago, before an abusive marriage put her on the streets. That all seems like a dream. Moment to moment is all that matters now, she says. "Nobody's going to whale on me here," Alvarez murmurs, closing her eyes. "It's just us homeless. Just me and Jesus. Just for a few hours." In 60 seconds, she's snoring. Father Louie arrives at 6:30 a.m. to open the church, and already the lost souls are waiting outside, eyes pleading, bundles at their feet. He leans on the huge, green doors, and as the strap-iron hinges groan, homeless people shuffle in as fast as they can and dump some of their bags in the back of the sanctuary. Sleep isn't easy after a nighttime of worried wandering; homeless people need to decompress just as office workers need to unwind after a long day. In place of the workers' glasses of wine and leather couches, there are old metal radiators for chilly hands and wooden pews. "This is about human decency," whispers Father Louie as he makes his way slowly among the homeless, making sure everyone has a spot, a blanket, a hand on the shoulder if they want it. "If society did this as a matter of course, we'd all be better off." Long ago, Louie Vitale was an Air Force officer. "A party-loving guy," he'll say with a grin. Then he flew as crew in battle craft during the Korean War, and that way of life disappeared. He became a brown-robed friar who spent three months in federal prison in 2002 for trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga., to protest the Army's training program for Latin American soldiers. "Fight the War at Home -- End Homelessness" reads the sign in his office today. He doesn't care if those who seek pews are high, mentally deteriorated, drunk or filthy. He says he sees only their hearts. And their exhaustion. By mid-morning, half the homeless crowd is already asleep. Others lie staring at the ceiling, and a few are doing the things they can't while wandering all night -- washing up in the church restroom, applying makeup, eating a sandwich in peace. This is where the half-dozen volunteers come in handiest, led by Gubbio Project Director Shelly Roder. Some give haircuts in the back. Some give massages. Others look up referrals, directing about 20 people a day to outside counselors for needle exchange, housing, drug rehab. And some just keep an eye out for squabbles or outbursts, quelling them with a loving hug or a few quiet words. "I guess they understand this is a holy place," says Don Nadile, a volunteer who was homeless a year ago. A few need to be reminded. Greg Jones, 37, figures it out one chilly morning when he starts yowling on the men's restroom floor with his pants around his ankles. He's shot a little too much heroin and he's disoriented. The syringe he jammed into his thigh lies next to him. "Come on, now, put on your clothes and get to the sidewalk," urges St. Anthony's guard Kelvin Anderson, Nadile at his side. Jones groans and rocks. Anderson and Nadile cajole, wait, urge again -- and after 15 minutes, Jones fumbles his pants to his waist. He stumbles outside. "I'm so sorry, so sorry, I know this is a church and I need to be better, I'm so sorry," Jones slurs over and over. By lunchtime, the snoring has become a concert. But up on the altar and spreading through the first one-third of the pews, life as a working church carries on. Father Louie celebrates Mass every day before 30 to 100 parishioners, and an occasional funeral or marriage. The idea is to fold homeless people into the routine, the priest says -- and no one took that more to heart than Gubbio director Roder, who last August jubilantly took her wedding walk down the aisle here through the huddled and sleeping homeless. Roder began life on an Iowa pig farm and built villages in the Dominican Republic before devoting her life to San Francisco's poor. At 28 she has gained a tender wisdom -- just ask those who depend on her. As 2 p.m. draws near, reluctant wakefulness comes to St. Boniface. Leaving the oasis of the pews means packing up shopping carts, saying one last prayer before hitting the sidewalk; the lost souls know that six hours of panhandling and sidewalk sitting, and even more hours of nightly wandering, lie ahead. Jerry Lend, 66, wakes to find he has bled on his blankets and pants. "Better have some more of this," he says, pulling out a half-empty pint of vodka -- then stops, eyes fixing on the huge crucifix over the altar. "On second thought, I'll wait until I'm out of here," he mumbles, rising to his feet. 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