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GARY EICHTEN: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Carousel Automobiles in Golden Valley, offering world class European automobiles from Audi, Land Rover and Porsche. 544-9591. Six minutes now past 12:00. This is Midday coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. And I'm glad you could join us today. We are focusing on the life and legacy of Mother Teresa. Her work really was a prime example of the Catholic Church's long-standing commitment to helping poor people. And this hour here on Midday, we're going to focus on some examples of that commitment here in Minnesota.

Minneapolis building called Safe Waiting, run by Catholic Charities, is full every night. It's the shelter of last resort for men living on the streets who need a place to sleep and who've been turned away by other shelters. But the restrictions imposed on the shelter anger Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner, the head of Catholic Charities. Public officials won't allow beds there. They worry that another shelter in the city with beds will attract more poor people to Minneapolis. Catholic Charities operates Safe Waiting because there are hundreds of people who have lost their general assistance welfare benefits.

Shortly after the shelter opened, Father Boxleitner talked about society's attitude toward poor people. The 66-year-old Boxleitner has been head of Catholic Charities for 33 years, and he talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson as part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series.

DAN OLSON: Let's get ourselves acclimated to this location we're at, we're in, downtown Minneapolis, just behind Target Center. What is the name of this place?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: We call this Safe Waiting, and it accommodates about 250, 280 people a night here. And we also have a food shelf operation in cooperation with Basilica Parish.

DAN OLSON: And this facility exists. Why?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, because the people who stay here are not eligible for any other kind of assistance. They're not eligible for shelter care. They don't have enough money of their own to rent a room. So this is the last resort in the social service ladder.

DAN OLSON: Who are the people who come here? Men and women, obviously.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: It's all men now. The women who just moved out about a week ago next door to the Salvation Army. And they have beds over there, which is an improvement here. We don't have any beds. They're not allowed.

DAN OLSON: Why? Why not allowed?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, if we had beds, we'd have to call it a shelter. And the zoning does not allow a shelter in this neighborhood. The thought is there are too many shelters now in Minneapolis. This perhaps would be a magnet for people to come to Minneapolis if they were treated with respect or something like that.

DAN OLSON: So, in other words, a fair number of shelters, as we know, charge for occupancy. I don't know what the rates are for some of the shelters. And this is a place with virtually no charge.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: No, we do not charge the people who use it. It is supported through Hennepin County and through our own funding, through Catholic Charities.

DAN OLSON: What was seen as the need? Apparently, people were wandering around without a place to go.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, the need occurred mostly when general assistance was cut off for the majority of the people who use this. If you're on general assistance, you can qualify for a shelter bed. But if you don't have that, then you qualify for nothing. And this started by housing people in the welfare office, having them sit up all night. And we took a look at that, and our board thought we could do a little better than that, so we opened a place across the street first and that got to be pretty rundown and the capacity was lower. So then the board bought this building here.

DAN OLSON: And how many people show up each night?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: 250 to 280.

DAN OLSON: And has anybody turned away?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: No, we don't turn anyone away. If they're very severely disturbed mentally or very, very intoxicated, then we try to get them into a medical facility.

DAN OLSON: This is the place of last resort for shelter.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: This is the bottom right here.

DAN OLSON: People show up at the door in the evening.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Right.

DAN OLSON: And what happens?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, first we check them out when they come in to make sure that they're not carrying any contraband. We don't allow any weapons in here or liquor, if we can find it. And then they check in at the desk. If they're regulars, we have a little card for them. Then we register them. It's like the Hilton, but maybe not quite. And then we say, well, here it is. Pick up one of these mats and find yourself a place to lay down.

DAN OLSON: So these mats are what? How thick are they?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, about a couple of inches. They're not much. We don't have any blankets. We don't have any pillows. And mainly, that's what we're trying to figure out how to do that. But it's mostly a sanitation issue.

DAN OLSON: There are showers, bathrooms?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: We have showers, we have bathrooms. And we'll give them a little snack later at night. And then in the morning, we give them some coffee and rolls and they hit the road.

DAN OLSON: Is there a chance to undress to get into something more comfortable than their street clothes?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Not really. They all sleep with their clothes on. First of all, they don't want them stolen and it's chilly.

DAN OLSON: There are beds for hundreds, I assume, of people in shelters around downtown Minneapolis and surrounding neighborhoods. What's your reaction to that feeling on the part of some public policy makers that, yeah, if we opened up more shelters, we would indeed attract the kind of people that make us all uneasy?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I suspect anybody who looks at the weather reports from this area this year would probably not be migrating here too rapidly. But this whole idea of being a magnet is in people's mind. And I don't know if we really have much evidence that that's true.

DAN OLSON: The media, among other groups, have put forth this image that indeed, Minneapolis is Money-apolis in the minds of some people from other parts of the country where benefits haven't been as generous. You say we need more research. Obviously, there are other voices out there saying we know the numbers, we can see the faces. We know who's coming.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I think they're more concerned about families that migrate here than they are individuals, because individuals are easier to ignore. When you come in with a couple of kids, then they have to get into the school system. They'll need housing. They'll need all kinds of public resources. I think when they interview folks who do come in from other areas, the majority don't even know about the welfare conditions. They're here because they consider it a safe place. They consider the schools are good.

They think that the neighborhoods are warm and nurturing. And that's the main reason. The last study I saw, which was a while ago, I must admit, I think only about 3% said they were really here for the welfare benefits.

DAN OLSON: What should we be doing instead of this place? This is well-painted. This is warm. It's heated. Food shelf in the basement, steps away. Mats on the floor upstairs. That's right. It's not the Luxford or the Hilton, but it is a place that's warm to stay.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I think there's something symbolic about having people sleep on the floor that's very undignified. That does not show adequate respect for a human being. And there was a meeting of a committee of our board yesterday wondering, should we continue with this kind of thing or not? And there was a lot of feeling, well, if we don't, are they all going to be sitting in the welfare building again? Or how can we improve the conditions here to make it more respectful to the people who must use it? We're looking at it, we're debating it and trying to figure out what best to do here.

DAN OLSON: Do you encounter fairly frequently the attitude that, well, Father Boxleitner, if Catholic Charities would shut this place down, the folks really would go someplace else, they would go to another city, another state?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: That often is unspoken. But I think I can read it in some of the comments that I hear. Yeah, let's sweep the people away. They're really not part of this community.

DAN OLSON: But this is a tough audience. You've referred to already the fact that some of these folks are chemically-addicted, that some of their mental health is not good. This is a very tough audience to serve. What should we be doing?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I think we got to look a little bit at the background. Some years ago when I first got into this game, many of the people that we see here sleeping on the floor would be in Hastings or Anoka state hospitals or other state hospitals around the state where they did have their medication, where they were able to do arts and crafts and some productive things, where they slept in a bed. But then we decided to mainstream them. And I think we were duped. We were told that the mental health services would follow the people into the communities. They have not.

There is some mental health services, of course, but not nearly adequate for the kind of people that we're seeing. We decriminalized alcoholism. Again, a very good idea. But in the old days, many of the folks we see here would be picked up, put in the paddy wagon, put in the drunk tank and released in the morning. And they were taken care of, they were safe and sobered up. We don't do that anymore. So we got some problems.

DAN OLSON: We de-institutionalized, I guess as the jargon goes, in the late 60s, early 70s, conditions in some of those facilities were awful. They were the focus of media accounts that were truly alarming and embarrassing. And I suppose in good faith, deinstitutionalization was seen as a more humane response, as you've pointed out. Now, we've been there, done that. Are you advocating going back to some form of institutionalization?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I think it might be appropriate in many instances. Of course, we don't want to duplicate the inhumane treatment. But how humane is it to have these folks wander around the streets on a day like today? There's no place to sit-in Minneapolis, unless you've got money to buy a hamburger. Been in the Crystal Court lately and looked for a chair. I was interested when they did the survey of downtown Minneapolis a few weeks ago saying it's inhospitable. There's no place to sit and look at the nice buildings.

Well, as I mentioned, I think maybe it's my paranoia, but if you have places to sit, then you've got these people, those people sitting around, and we don't want to look at them.

DAN OLSON: This is an expensive proposition-- re-institutionalizing people. I have no idea what it would cost on a per person basis. But clearly, it would be a large cost at a time when the state feels that apparently is already strapped and facing federal budget cuts, so how should it be done?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I don't think you need to institutionalize a lot of folks, but we could use a lot more mental health workers who can attend to these folks and mentor them and make sure they're on their meds and make sure that they have some structure around them. Many people with mental illness will go into remission if they have some controls and have something to work for, something to look forward to. But these folks are wanderers. They've got nothing going for them and they know it. And so they do get off into a haze of reality.

DAN OLSON: The impression is that Minnesota is very progressive in this area and that we try to do the right thing in this state. Are there models around the country of states or cities or counties that, in your opinion, are closer to having the right model in terms of, if not a full blown institution of the old days, something else that is more humane than this approach?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I don't know of anything. I think this is a national disease. I understand the major cities like New York, the train stations were open all night and they're full of people sitting up who have no resources at all. But we want to imitate that kind of thing in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I don't think so.

GARY EICHTEN: Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner, the director of Catholic Charities, talking with Dan Olson. The Safe Waiting Shelter run by Catholic Charities is for men. Boxleitner says there's a separate shelter for women. Let's return now to our Voices of Minnesota conversation with Father Boxleitner.

DAN OLSON: There's been a fair amount of coverage of the attitude in the land these days towards the poor and the rap that is placed on us as taxpayers and citizens is that we're not interested in the poor anymore. The poor are the enemy. We don't want to see them.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I think that's a very accurate assessment. The poor are the problem rather than the systems that we have being the problem. We've had a lot of failures in trying to help people, but on the other hand, we tried a lot harder than we do now. I get a lot of questions. Don't these people read the want ads? Why just last Sunday, there were 63 pages of jobs available? Well, that's an easy solution. But it's a bit naive. Until you meet these folks and see what the issues are, see what their problems are, and how far down they are in a survival mode that most of these people that we see here are pretty unemployable. And they're going to stay that way.

DAN OLSON: Given the right circumstances, OK, maybe not all of these folks, but maybe a fourth of them, maybe even a half of them could indeed make the decision to be in a different setting or have families somewhere that would take care of them.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Most of them have burned the bridges on families. I think a lot of folks have encountered an alcoholic in their family and realize all the deception and deceit that goes on there and really how destructive this is. They're not welcome in a family setting, a lot of them.

DAN OLSON: And then the onus is placed on employers to employ people who are on the bottom rung here using this facility.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: This is true. And we need a lot more mentoring. Some of these folks can make it if they are mentored. But again, that's an expensive situation and it requires mostly getting out to the suburbs because that's where the jobs that are applicable to this population.

DAN OLSON: And then the burden is shifted to the private sector, to Catholic Charities, to the other religious denominations who spend a huge amount of money doing this kind of work and individuals who we are told are going to pick up, have to pick up a major portion of the federal cuts. Do you see that happening?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: No. We can pick up more, but not a lot more. We have a lot of contributions from various parishes of all denominations. But we can never make up the cuts in the government subsidies. It's far too-- far too heavy.

DAN OLSON: So Catholic Charities, you say, can do more. How much does it cost to run this place?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, the building itself cost $1 million to acquire and to renovate. And I'm not exactly sure how much we're kicking in, a couple of $100,000. The county's kicking in a couple of $100,000. So this is a good county. I mean, I'm not criticizing Hennepin County here. They're doing their best, but they're strapped. And there is this fear of attracting people from all over here.

DAN OLSON: Father Jerome Boxleitner, I seem to recall that you are a native son of the capital city of Minnesota, the city of St. Paul.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I am that. Grew up in the Como area, between Como Park and the Fairgrounds.

DAN OLSON: Son of privilege. Comfortable family.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: My father was employed throughout the Depression. He was a city fireman and was a captain in the fire department. I never knew hunger, never knew poverty. My parents both had a very strong social conscience. And that I guess I inherited that.

DAN OLSON: Where did that come from? Where did their social conscience come from?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: I'm not really sure. I think, as I said, I grew up during the Depression, and they saw people out of jobs and through no fault of their own, and they were very helpful to others. And it was just-- that's just what you did.

DAN OLSON: What did they say to you about that? Or if they didn't say anything, what did they-- what model did they leave with you?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, a lot of men would come out, too, in those days was almost suburban and would offer to trim the hedge and cut the grass and all this stuff. And my mother would never allow that. She just invite them in and feed them, whoever they were. And they were always very nice and grateful. And she said, well, I grew up in a very Christian family. And she says, if you got something, you got to share it. And they always did.

DAN OLSON: Then you apparently paddled along through your youth, private, parochial school or public school?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Right. Yeah. It was not, The University of Saint Thomas, went through there. And I was ordained in 1956.

DAN OLSON: You chose the celibate existence. You took the calling. What was the decision behind? What was the thinking behind that decision?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, the reason for that, as was explained to us in those days, is that your family is your parish, and you have much more time to do these kinds of things, and there's obviously some truth in that. I was fortunate in that I was then sent to graduate school in social service, and that really sharpened my awareness of the society's problems.

DAN OLSON: What did you see?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I was in Washington where-- [CHUCKLES] there was an enormous migration there of people from the south coming into the city. And the field work I did was with the people of color and wondering why on Earth they ever came to Washington, which was no paradise in those days. But then they described what they came from in the deep south. And yeah, Washington did look good.

DAN OLSON: So you were doing what there?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: This was a field work I did. We did a thesis on why people moved to Washington, which was very revealing. And also the field work I did was in a juvenile center, which was almost all kids of color.

DAN OLSON: The name Catholic Charities implies this kind of benevolent reaching down with a helping hand organization. Is that what it is? Is that what it was when you were in training?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, it's always been a two-fold thing. You meet the needs of people, try to treat them with dignity and respect. But secondly, you try to change the social conditions that cause people to be in this situation. When Catholic Charities nationally was started, one of the first things in its charter was must be the attorney for the poor. And that's very much part of what we do.

DAN OLSON: So you're a lobbyist? You're in the halls of public policy?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Indeed we are. We have an office for social justice. And right now, they're over there every day watching the welfare reform.

DAN OLSON: And are you patted on the head and seen as good, well-meaning folks? Or do you have a measure of clout?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: We have a measure of clout. We have a very effective board of directors, and they have a great deal of influence. I'm not much for being patted on the head. I think we degrade ourselves when we degrade other people. And I think that's what we're doing with something like this Safe Waiting situation. This is not good for this city or this state. It's not good for us who are brought up in a religious tradition. It goes contrary to what we've been taught.

DAN OLSON: Do you see any progress in the amount of years-- how many years have you been doing this kind of work?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, since 1963. That's a time.

DAN OLSON: We'll spare the math. And you see progress?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: No, I see regression. The biggest progress, which many will disagree with was when Johnson launched the war on poverty. That's been criticized. But on the other hand, there are many good effects from that. And the main thing it did was tell people that they had potential, that they have hope, that they're worth the money. And as we keep cutting back on everything, we're giving-- what message are we giving to these guys sleeping here on this floor that nobody wants them around, they're worthless and please move on? And I think that's very destructive to the fabric of this community.

DAN OLSON: Do you see anything that's changing. We're in a boom time economy, for most Americans, has never been better. A lot of money washing around. And one of the sections of the newspaper today has a story on this guy who owns the duty free shops. He's given away $600 million over the course of his lifetime anonymously. So there's a lot of generosity out there.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: These are very generous communities. Attitudinally, however, we still have that hard core who feel anybody who wants to work can work and absolutely should. And I hear stories from the depression. But that's a whole different scenario than we have today. It's not comparable. Incidentally, I was over there the other day and a curious remark was made by one of the senators. He said, the real problem in reforming welfare and being human are the white, successful men.

DAN OLSON: What was that? What was that all about?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: They're the biggest opposition to helping out poor folks.

DAN OLSON: Why?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I didn't really get into it, but I suspect they feel that I did it, so can they. And I think there's a certain amount of selfishness there, a certain amount of not wanting to really look at the situation. You get into a church pew and the preacher starts talking about the easier for the camel to get through the eye of a needle. You don't want to hear that stuff. So I think that you get to have to justify and deny your responsibility for it.

DAN OLSON: You didn't end on a very optimistic note when you said that you think we've gone backwards in time from the Great Society days. Where's your optimism? Where is the hope?

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Well, I think the hope has to be in the decency of people. And as we continue to try to improve situations for folks, you always have to be optimistic, where you to walk around and hear at night and these people shake your hand and thank you for this. You figure, wow. [CHUCKLES] I don't know what your impressions are of this situation, but it's deplorable. It's deplorable.

DAN OLSON: Father Jerome Boxleitner, Thanks a lot for joining us.

JEROME BOXLEITNER: Thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner, the head of Catholic Charities, talking with Dan Olson. The interview, part of our Voices of Minnesota series, was originally broadcast back in February. This is Midday, coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio. And today we're focusing on the legacy of Mother Teresa. And this hour, specifically taking a look at Catholic organizations in our area that are working with the poor and specifically what they're doing. About 10,000 people turned out in Calcutta today to mourn Mother Teresa.

Of course, the funeral, the official state funeral isn't until Saturday. And there'll be revivals and memorials throughout the week in Calcutta. The White House said today that Hillary Rodham Clinton will likely represent the United States at Mother Teresa's funeral on Saturday. Hillary Clinton has met Mother Teresa at least twice when Mother Teresa attended a Washington prayer breakfast in 1994 and then again in 1995 when she opened a charity home in the Washington suburbs. Mrs. Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, toured an orphanage founded by Mother Teresa during a visit to India back in 1994 or 1995, rather.

But at the time, Mother Teresa was actually in Vietnam. Mrs. Clinton has been in London for the funeral of Princess Diana. The US Senate today said a prayer for Mother Teresa before resuming business for the week. The Senate's chaplain delivered a prayer and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott paid tribute to her life. Lott says that because of Mother Teresa, we have a better understanding of what true greatness really is. Three months ago, Mother Teresa was awarded Congress's highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for her work with the poor.

In Duluth, there is a place where homeless people and home owners, for many years, lived together. It's called Loaves and Fishes. It was founded by a young couple, Angie Miller and Steve O'Neil, in a simple two-storey house. They shared this house with their children, several live-in volunteers and more than a half dozen homeless people. Loaves and Fishes is more than just a shelter. The volunteers are trying to create a new kind of community where work and money and life are shared. Minnesota Public Radio producer Stephen Smith spent some time at Loaves and Fishes in Duluth to find out why they chose to share their home and devote their lives to difficult and charitable work.

ANGIE MILLER: Well, Hamburger helper.

STEVE O'NEIL: Hamburger helper? What a special treat.

I'm Steve O'Neil and we're at Loaves and Fishes house on Jefferson Street in Duluth. We generally have about seven or eight guests here with us in this house. There's five other community members, including Angie Miller.

ANGIE MILLER: I'm Steve's wife. What makes us different than a lot of agencies and shelters is that everyone is entitled just by being a person to a place to sleep and enough to eat and those kind of basics without any questions asked, without-- I mean, some people stay here, and we don't know their last name.

SPEAKER: Our kitchen, living room and dining room was an inch underneath water. And we stopped payment of rent, so that we could get it fixed. We went into court and the judge said, you have to pay the rent or move. That's when we couldn't find another place. That's when we contacted Steve.

STEVE O'NEIL: The whole community notion comes from both Angie's and my experience in growing up in big families where there was a sense of community. We both lived in households of ten, 11, 12.

ANGIE MILLER: I grew up in a family that had a lot of foster children. Many, many children my parents took in, as well as a few adults who didn't have anywhere to go, either friends or relatives or other people. And so actually, I think that's how I came to be here and came to want to share my house with other people.

SPEAKER: I was working up north on a horse ranch in Auburn, and I had to have carpal tunnel surgery done on both my hands. And I had a daughter that was born, and she went into a temporary foster care setting. The foster care mother told me about Angie that works here.

SPEAKER: When I leave, I know that tomorrow, I can always come back. The door is always open, and the phone's always on. And they never try to turn you away in a wrong way. They turn you away in the right way to say, well, not today, but maybe tomorrow, which is very hospitable of them.

ANGIE MILLER: We could, of course, have jobs in a shelter. But I just think, the quality of this house, I think, since we do live here and it is our house, it is a lot better than any shelter that I've ever been in or visited. Now, several people who are living here now have lived here five or six months. And there are some very close ties between people here. And I don't think that we would experience that if we just did this eight hours a day.

What? Was he panicking?

STEVE O'NEIL: Yep. Pick him up. And it's just great. Yeah. Yeah.

This is Loaves and Fishes house, and Angie, myself, and our two kids, Brendan and Bree, live here, as well as Liz and Richard in the community. And then we do primarily hospitality for homeless men from Northern Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin and also for Central American refugees, mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador on their way to Canada, just up the border. Across the street, Hannah House is across the street, a couple doors down. It's our hospitality house for families.

We have families again, from the same area around Duluth here. And John and Frank live there, part of the community, and the community members are people who have made a commitment to living and working in the community. They live permanently in a sense that they make some commitment, a year or whatever.

ANGIE MILLER: The name Loaves and Fishes came from-- of course, the story in the New Testament where there was just a few fishes and a few loaves and it was multiplied to feed 5,000. And so we thought it was a good name for this house because in the beginning it was just Steve and I and very little money and no ongoing support or anything really, and we just hoped it would multiply, which it has. And the house for families is Hannah House. And that came from a woman in the Old Testament who was the mother of Samuel. And there's a couple of verses in there called the Song of Hannah, and it's her vision of peace and justice, really. It's a beautiful poem. We wanted a woman's name for that house, since it's mostly women and children.

STEVE O'NEIL: We're at Hannah House, which is we bought this house last November with the help of primarily a Christian Fellowship group from UMD, University of Minnesota, Duluth faculty and administrators.

SPEAKER: I want to drink water.

STEVE O'NEIL: OK. They like the idea of this house, and I think they want it about-- I think at the time they were asking $28,000 for it. So within about a week of discussing this with the group, they said, well, we got the down payment, $2,500, and we think we can raise more.

JOHN HYDE: My name is John Hyde. And I've been involved with the Catholic Worker Movement for a number of years. And basically, what I do here, I do have a part time job outside the house. I live here. This is my home. And I like to think that it's our home with whoever is here at any given time.

STEVE O'NEIL: We've only asked a handful of people of our 200, 200 plus guests, I don't know, maybe we've asked five or six people to leave, most of those were alcohol-related. On the other hand, we've had a lot of people who have been guests here who would be labeled paranoid, schizophrenics, and and so on. And--

ANGIE MILLER: People who have done long jail terms for violent acts.

STEVE O'NEIL: Right. And they've lived here, and they've been wonderful people.

ANGIE MILLER: It's a leap of faith. I mean, because the door is never locked. And sometimes, we're not here. And if someone wanted to walk off with something, it would be really easy. But in the two-- over two years that we've been doing this, nothing has really disappeared or no one in our family's been hurt. And it's been-- I think it's mostly faith.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TIM IVERSON: My name is Tim Iverson. My wife and I was evicted out of our apartment because of the fact that there was about an inch of water through the whole apartment. We moved in here in January and stayed until the 1st of March. And after the first day, for me, it was like it was my home.

TAMMY IVERSON: I was really shocked that there were someplace like this up in Duluth. I mean, I could see the Salvation Army or the Red Cross have something, but not just a family themselves.

SPEAKER: And that makes a difference?

TIM IVERSON: Oh, yeah, a lot of differences. More of a-- they treat you more as family.

TAMMY IVERSON: They respect you.

TIM IVERSON: Yes. And if it was like, Tammy was saying, I mean, the Salvation Army is great and the Red Cross is great, but it's more of a business setting there. Here, it's you need socks, they got socks for you. If you need clothing, they'll get you clothing or help you get your clothing. They were like mother and father. I might have even joked around with Angie a little bit saying, hey, mom, what do I do next?

ANGIE MILLER: There's another package too. It's finished. And it came from a dumpster behind a grocery store not too far from here. And it looks really good, doesn't it? I'll just wash it extra good. And I guess we'll have it for dinner.

SPEAKER: You do that pretty often?

ANGIE MILLER: Yeah, I think it's something we're going to start doing more this summer. Hard to do in the winter since everything freezes solid. But--

SPEAKER: That stuff looks good. I mean--

ANGIE MILLER: It does look good, doesn't it?

SPEAKER: There's nothing wrong with that.

ANGIE MILLER: It looks better than some of the spinach I've paid for and brought home. Yeah, I know. This stuff looks really good. Well, yeah, we only bring home this stuff that looks good, and it's still all wrapped up. And you be amazed what you can find in a dumpster.

STEVE O'NEIL: Well, the Catholic Worker Movement was started by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day in the 1930s in New York. Dorothy Day had led a very interesting life, had hung out with Eugene O'Neill and a lot of the socialist, Communist and progressive thinkers and writers on the East Coast, primarily in New York, had been a journalist and union activist and so on. And somewhere along there, she had a religious conversion, became Catholic, and then met this Peter Maurin, who was kind of a wandering French philosopher.

They started talking about how to lead their lives as Christians and decided that the way to do it was to open houses of hospitality for people in need. It was 1930s. It was New York City. And there was plenty of need.

JOHN HYDE: Initially, Catholic workers were Catholic, and there was Dorothy and others at the house, went to church daily. And it's almost become-- Dorothy might not welcome this, but it's become just the name.

ANGIE MILLER: No, I'm not Catholic. That's true. Throughout the country. You know, there's many Catholic worker houses all throughout the United States. And even in its early days, it was a very diverse movement that included all kinds of people of faith and also some of no faith. So, no, you don't have to be Catholic.

JOHN HYDE: I've been repulsed through the years by missionary efforts that were proselytizing. And I think for me, that's the dark side of my own faith tradition. And it's come to a head in contemporary times for me with these various soup kitchens and missions where homeless folk come in, and they're subjected to a sermon and and then a meal. And so they have to endure Christianity in order to get what's really, really Christian. And that is a meal.

ANGIE MILLER: Well, when they come in the door, there's a small sign that says Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House. Used to be on the outside, but now it's on the inside. And if it weren't for that sign, when you walk in the door, this house looks just like any other house.

SPEAKER: You call this dining room, living, dining? How do you say dining room? Or like where we eat at? The kitchen but--

SPEAKER: Commodore.

SPEAKER: Commodore.

SPEAKER: Commodore.

SPEAKER: Commodore.

SPEAKER: Commodore.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

STEVE O'NEIL: I would say half or better of our food is donated in a few different ways. We get food. People bring in canned goods and everything. We brought-- somebody brought in a huge leg of lamb, quarter of a beef, turkeys, and so on and boxes of things. And then about three nights a week, three nights a week, we can count on, sometimes more people bring in suppers.

LIZ CARLSON: My name is Liz Carlson, and I guess I came to be here because I work with Steve down in our affordable housing office. And as I worked and became more familiar with the office and with what Steve and Angie were doing here, it became increasingly more clear to me that the way I was living my home life was very different than how I was living my work life.

FRANK HURLEY: My name is Frank Hurley, and I've really been felt drawn to the Catholic Worker Movement for a long time. Some of my values are that manual labor, working with my hands in ways like washing dishes or building something or cleaning is really fulfilling in a way that no other work I can think of is.

LIZ CARLSON: I was raised Catholic in a large family, very, very, very middle class. All of my family, with the exception of me, is still middle class.

FRANK HURLEY: I don't know if I'm Catholic. Sometimes, I don't even know if I'm a Christian, but I just know that this is a way for me to live out my family's faith and still hold on to my own identity.

LIZ CARLSON: I'm the alien of the family, and my family certainly has no idea where I came from. And really, for the most part, doesn't entirely understand what I'm choosing to do with my life now.

FRANK HURLEY: I gave up a job. I gave up my apartment and had to say goodbye, at least for the time being, to some close friends. And I asked myself if I was making a mistake. And I was-- I felt pretty scared.

LIZ CARLSON: This is what I'm interested in. This is the choice that I made very aware of the consequences that it would have on certain other parts of my life. That doesn't mean that I can't spend time with other people or on dates. Certainly, no one expects me to come here and be in a nunnery or anything like that. Yeah, that's certainly not part of it. And I'm proud of this place. I'm happy to be here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CARL: Well, I'm Carl. I'm 31 years old. Basically, I've been in different halfway houses out of state hospitals and things like that. After a six-month commitment in the hospital three different times, like twice, I came into Arrowhead House here in Duluth. And once I was down in a halfway house in Brainerd.

SPEAKER: What's it like to live here and especially compared to some of the other places you've been the halfway houses? Do you like it here?

CARL: Well, in the halfway houses I stayed in and then in the state hospitals and things like that, it seems like the they never, never bring out the good things that you're doing. It always seems like they write the paperwork out on bad things that happen. In a place like this, you have a right to be your own person and live the way you want to live more.

STEVE O'NEIL: We see a lot of single people, particularly single men who have chronic chemical dependency problems. And then to some degree, the people who have chronic mental health problems, they do fine here. There's a lot of support. There's a sense of family and community. And then they move out. And all they can afford to do is get a single room somewhere. A lot of depressing ones. And they don't do well at all. Their lives kind of fall apart again. And our hope is that we could get a third house that would be a long term place, really an open ended place. So hopefully, in the next six months or a year, we'll have a third house like that.

SPEAKER: Read the caption. It says, emits showers of sparks do not hold in hand. Place upright on a level surface. The light fuse. Get away. Use only under close adult supervision.

SPEAKER: Oh, mom, give me one. Wasn't that cool? Some of these fly.

SPEAKER: Careful now, Gabe.

SPEAKER: They're better in the dark.

SPEAKER: No, I want to save those for your mom.

SPEAKER: Can I just--

ANGIE MILLER: Up until recently, there were many families who stayed here with many children. And sometimes, that was really hard on our children to have that many kids to share their toys with and to share their parents time with. And they were outnumbered for a lot of last summer. And I think that was hard. But now, we've opened another house, especially for families. And so most of the families will be there.

STEVE O'NEIL: I've talked with Brianna a lot about this, and she does-- some days, she's not so happy. Other days, she is. I will say that, she's six, she's starting to realize that most of her friends well, really all of her friends don't live in settings like this. They don't live in communities. They don't share their houses with people. And so sometimes, there's that. I think she has that sense of-- why can't we just be like everybody else, which is, seems pretty normal. Brendan, who's three, seems to really enjoy it almost all the time because there's a lot of stimulation and different people to play with adults and kids. I think for him, he's pretty happy.

ANGIE MILLER: Actually, we have family day every Sunday where the four of us leave the house, because if we're here, it seems we're inevitably caught up in somebody's crisis. But if we can leave like we've been doing and we leave for most of the day, then we can maintain that sense of a family, which I think that helps a lot.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOHN HYDE: Well, a pretty diverse group of folks is gathered here, so it looks like high school students and veterans and children and Catholic workers and just a whole bunch of folks. And what we do have in common is a sense that killing is wrong and war doesn't work. And so we're going to go as a group down to dockside where a warship annually comes for recruiting purposes, stand there with signs that express our concern, our feelings about the warship.

We're going to distribute leaflets to folks trying to just pass along education and information, and some will go on board the ship and hold a prayer service and refuse to leave in the tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience, direct action.

ANGIE MILLER: An inherent part of the philosophy of the Catholic Worker movement is resistance to injustice and militarism.

STEVE O'NEIL: We, as a government, have decided that we're going to spend our half our budget on militarism, $300 billion a year, so we don't have enough housing for people, so we don't have enough jobs for people. And because of that, we have homeless people. We don't have enough mental health care. So we have mentally ill people wandering the streets. We, as well as many, many other places, see those people firsthand. So in some ways, for us to just take care of people's needs and not to say, well, why are they homeless? Why are they refugees would be shallow.

JOHN HYDE: I was in a Rhode Island penitentiary for 10 and 1/2 months for a plowshares action hammering on a trident submarine. And I got a numerous letters from folks saying, John, you really should be out here. What are you doing in prison? We need you to be serving soup. And the lines are getting longer and we need more hands. And then I got to what I thought were really insightful and they certainly were affirming letters of the time, people that were both on the soup line serving, friends of mine.

And they said, John, we're glad you're there and we're glad you're there because the lines are only getting longer. And as long as we only serve soup and bandage wounds, the lines of poor, disenfranchised and wounded people are going to grow. And we need some bodies to get in the cogs of that system and say, enough is enough.

SPEAKER: All right. This is our Mark 13 missile launcher. It has the capacity to shoot every eight to tens seconds. It launches SM1 missiles with its surface to air missiles and harpoon, which is surface to surface missiles.

SPEAKER: God of peace, forgive us for celebrating the weapons of war.

SPEAKER: Do you see a lot of this kind of protest in your travels with the recruiting ship?

SPEAKER: No this is the first instance of having protesters. It's very peaceful. They're not bothering anybody. They're smiling.

SPEAKER: Forgive us for celebrating weapons of war.

ANGIE MILLER: I think we lost some support during the Persian Gulf War. People who were either volunteering at the house or giving us money and were very much supportive of the work we were doing with homeless people. But when we were out being arrested at the Civic Center, they weren't supportive of that. And they didn't see the connection between homelessness and war the same way we do.

STEVE O'NEIL: We had this wonderful plumber who was doing the majority of the plumbing work on Hannah House, our new house for families for free, and very nice man. But when the war started and he saw us on TV protesting, he was just outraged. He was very upset. I mean, so upset that he really didn't even want to talk about it. And he just know, I'm not doing any more work there.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: Could somebody do the French bread? I mean, garlic bread.

ANGIE MILLER: Five years from now, I'm sure I'll be here. And Steve will be here. But I'm not positive everyone else will be here. The other community members, I'm not sure. It would be unrealistic for me to say that this is it, this is the end period. At age 23, I don't think that would be realistic and truthful. And so all I can do for now is to commit to at least a year, but most probably longer than that. And while I'm here to commit wholeheartedly to what I'm doing.

JOHN HYDE: Within the Catholic worker, my experience has been that there are several kinds of folks. There are those folks like Steve and Angie who have clearly set down a local permanent presence. You have a second kind of group of folks. And I think that perhaps I fall into that category. In one sense, we're kind of like the migrant Catholic workers moving from place to place.

STEVE O'NEIL: I can imagine doing it for years. I think one of the challenges that we'll have is as our children grow up, what they'll want to do, when they become teenagers, for example. They might not choose this life and so maybe we'll have to take a break from it, but hopefully they will.

ANGIE MILLER: I don't think we really look at what we're doing as a sacrifice. I mean, my parents used to say this to-- every night you go to bed. And that you somehow made a difference in somebody's life. And so there's a lot of-- happiness or peace that comes from that, I think. Feels good.

SPEAKER: Yeah, you should have been here last night. We had a food fight for real-- carrots and ice cream and potato salad.

SPEAKER: It was pretty wild.

ANGIE MILLER: There is a verse, and I think it's in Ephesians. And it says something about, you should be kind to everybody because you never know when you're entertaining angels unaware. And Dorothy, really, Dorothy Day talked a lot about this, too, is that in every person you can see Christ. And so for that reason alone, you should treat everyone with dignity, respect, and-- there's a few people who've come here who just are mysterious enough and special enough in their own way that you just wonder if they're not really some kind of an angel.

Now, there's just something about them and they're just special. And probably the ones who are really angels are the ones that even I don't suspect. They're probably the ones who have been the hardest to love and hardest to live with.

SPEAKER: But when they come on every Thursday at 7:00, the main one must help get the food ready.

GARY EICHTEN: The House of Loaves and Fishes was produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Stephen Smith, technical director, John Scherf. The music was written and performed by Bob Ekstrand. Financial support provided by the Northwest Area Foundation. This documentary, by the way, was produced in 1991. The House of Loaves and Fishes is still operating in Duluth. In fact, a third house was opened a few years ago. Steve O'Neil and Angie Miller live down the street. Well, that does it for our Midday program today.

I'd like to thank you for joining us and invite you to join us tomorrow. Part of our Midday program tomorrow, we'll go off to the National Press Club. Press Club is gearing up again for a speech by the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Today's programming is supported by financial contributions from Minnesota Public Radio listeners.