The following comes from an Aug. 27 story by Christina Gray in Catholic San Francisco. To read the Aug. 11 Cal Catholic story about a similar ministry in San Diego, click here.

Office workers on their lunch hour, shivering tourists, local street folk and others crisscrossing the sidewalks near San Francisco’s Metreon complex Aug. 18 walked past – and a few around – the burly man in their path clutching a bouquet of colorful plastic rosary beads in one outstretched hand, a Chihuahua-dachshund mix named Buddy in the other.

“Would you like a rosary?” 51-year-old Matt Barba asked the curious few who approached him, a mix of both practicing and non-practicing Catholics who said they were drawn to the rosary, the Divine Mercy sign propped up next to his white folding table, as well as the pigeon-chasing antics of Buddy.

The unassuming Barba is the founder of Curbside Catholics, the name he coined for a lay street ministry he launched just three months ago. The once wayward Catholic hopes to bring the “beauty, truth and richness” of the Catholic faith to the public square like Jesus’ disciples did 2,000 years ago.

“My goal is to awaken people,” he said. “We’re not saving souls, we’re planting seeds.”

….Barba and his small band of Curbside Catholics began stationing themselves on the sidewalks of some of San Francisco’s busiest neighborhoods this summer, fortified by a rotation of Dominican priests and brothers from St. Albert’s Priory in Oakland who have been evangelizing on the other side of the bay for a year….

To learn more, visit www.curbsidecatholics.com.

To read the entire story, click here.