This week (late October) one of our donors asked us to introduce ourselves, saying “It’s as though we’re reading or commenting into a void.”

The website California Catholic Daily was started on January 1, 2007. It grew out of a group of Catholic papers – the Los Angeles Mission, San Francisco Faith, San Diego News Notes, and La Cruz de California – started in the 1990s.

Those four papers each had an editor: George Neumayr (who now writes for the American Spectator) was the editor of the Faith, Chris Zehnder (who has written Catholic grade school textbooks) edited the Mission, Tim Ryland (who works for Catholic Answers) edited the News Notes, and Bob McPhail (who was a reporter and later city editor for the Oceanside Blade-Tribune, but who had moved to Tijuana) edited La Cruz.

The coordination and most of the financial support came from Jim Holman, owner and editor of the San Diego Reader, a weekly alternative paper. Holman was involved in the parental notification initiatives on the California ballot in 2005, 2006, and 2008. Since 2005 Holman has served as board chairman of the International Theological Institute in Austria, whose chancellor is Cardinal Christoph Schonborn and vice-chancellor is Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

By the end of 2006 it made sense to close down the print editions and merge into the website. Bob McPhail took on most of the editing of the new site. He is assisted by Holman, who still works at the Reader; Emily Morris, mother of two kids; Jeff Grace, who worked formerly at Ignatius Press; Janet Ross, who lives in San Diego; Jim Graves, who lives in Orange County, but covers Churches Worth Driving To all over the state; Gibbons Cooney, who reports from San Francisco; and Mary Rose, a member of the Survivors pro-life group, who visits college campuses (Inquiring Minds) from her home in Ojai.

California Catholic Daily is a 501c3 non-profit. Our board members include Eva Muntaen of Ignatius Press and co-chair of the Walk for Life; Paul Griffin, CEO of Griffin Living; Albin Rhomberg, pro-life lobbyist in Sacramento and defendant in Planned Parenthood suit against David Daleiden; Josh Little of Sonoma and Geoff Coleman of Modesto, both young fathers of families and working in the wine industry.

In 2019 we launched our new mobile site, started the Inquiring Minds feature, and increased our subscriber list and our Facebook page readers.

We appreciate any help you can give to increase our reach to all of California.

Click here to make tax-deductible donation.