Oakland Diocese’s ‘Father Jay’ remembered as a bridge between church and city

As part of a two-hour-plus interfaith service April 7  for the Very Rev. James V. Matthews II, community leaders both sanctified and secular praised the rector of the Cathedral of Christ the Light as a man whose faith transcended his Catholic faith and the problems of the world.

“Father Jay changed the church, like he changed Oakland, from the inside out,” said former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris. “He was an ambassador from the Catholic church to Oakland, and an ambassador from Oakland to the Catholic church.”