Catholic Charities: Serving those most in need for 150 years

Two women work in a Catholic Charities kitchen. The nonprofit now serves 1 million meals a year to people in need.

A former restaurant worker in the Highland Park area of St. Paul, Dawn Folger, 49, found herself without a place to live and without a job.

Beginning in July 2017, Folger stayed at Higher Ground St. Paul’s women’s emergency shelter until January 2019, when she moved onto the fourth floor of the Higher Ground residence. “I have a fairly big room and up here, it’s real quiet,” Folger said. “It feels good to have a space that’s mine.”

Higher Ground St. Paul, which opened in downtown St. Paul in 2017, is the centerpiece of a $100 million Dorothy Day Place housing and social services campus. The largest public-private partnership in housing and social services in Minnesota history, Higher Ground St. Paul was built and is run by Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis — a nonprofit that last year celebrated its 150th anniversary of serving people in need.

“I love that it’s called ‘Higher Ground,’ as Catholic Charities is constantly raising our collective aspirations about how we live out the Gospel,” said Tim Welsh, 54, vice chair of consumer and business banking at U.S. Bank and a Catholic Charities board member. “We must do more for the homeless — we have to raise our sights.”

Dorothy Day Place provides emergency shelter and permanent housing, plus physical, mental and chemical health care services for long-term homeless adults like Folger, many of whom have health challenges or face other barriers to housing. It also offers housing search and placement services, job training, employment counseling, financial and legal support services, internet access, meals, showers, laundry and more.

Catholic Charities has a strong history of meeting community needs for over 150 years, beginning with its first program in 1869, St. Joseph’s German Catholic Orphan Society in St. Paul.

Catholic Charities’ adoption program, which began in the early 1900s and has since been discontinued, brought many children into caring families.

“The program was in response to children in need following the Civil War and the thousands of children who were sent to Minnesota on orphan trains,” said Tim Marx, 64, Catholic Charities president and CEO.

Men and boys hoist the sign in 1900 for the orphanage in St. Paul, which offered accommodations for 127 children.

The mid-1900s brought an expansion of Catholic Charities’ work to include not only the health and well-being of children, but families, the elderly and those at risk of or experiencing homelessness. By 1977, Catholic Charities had expanded the depth and complexity of services provided to those most in need — regardless of faith, background or circumstance — who increasingly face the effects of racial injustice and trauma.

Catholic Charities has grown into an organization with more than 500 employees that operates 24 hours, seven days a week, serving “those most in need in the darkest days of their lives,” Marx said. “We still have that same core mission and philosophical approach, but have continually adapted to the current needs of the community.”

Now, Catholic Charities is the largest comprehensive social service nonprofit in the Twin Cities. It operates 26 programs from early childhood education to supporting older adults, from mental health assistance to helping people secure and maintain housing, at 17 locations, plus additional community sites. In its 2019 fiscal year, Catholic Charities served nearly 23,000 men, women, children and families.

Support the mission of Catholic Charities at 7 p.m. Dec. 3 by joining the online Evening of Hope in Action, a virtual alternative to the annual St. Nicholas Dinner, which has generally drawn more than 1,000 people. The evening will feature a special pre-recorded video for thousands of supporters to tune in from their homes and see what 2020 has been like for Catholic Charities. The presentation also will showcase ways the community has taken action to support the nonprofit’s mission. For more information, go to cctwincities.org/be-the-hope.

Gardening in the 1960s with several children under the care of Catholic Charities.

The largest service area — individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness — includes the Ramsey County Family Service Center in Maplewood and Higher Ground St. Paul and Higher Ground Minneapolis, encompassing the Dorothy Day Residence and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation St. Paul Opportunity Center, and the Mary F. Frey Minneapolis Opportunity Center and Hope Street Shelter for homeless youth in Minneapolis, and several other programs.

Additional Catholic Charities programs serve and support the elderly, people with disabilities and children and families, such as assistance with case management for older adults that help them remain independent in their homes, and a day treatment program that offers comprehensive mental health and education services to elementary school children with severe emotional and behavioral challenges.

Mary Ann Sullivan, 74, worked at Catholic Charities for 30 years, retiring as vice president for program operations in 2015. “The community needs were strong, but we were constantly evaluating our programs to make sure we weren’t duplicating work already being done so that we could really have an impact where it was needed most,” she said.

“We listened to the people being served, learned from our frontline staff and tried to make sure that our work achieved outcomes,” Sullivan said. “That’s how we moved away from programs like prenatal care and adoption work into housing and racial justice, as those needs kept coming stronger and stronger.”

William Reiling purchased the building that housed Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul in 1984, three years after it first opened as a storefront and shared space with an autobody shop and a business office. With demand for services increasing, Reiling offered the entire property at favorable lease terms to Catholic Charities until the nonprofit could purchase the building. In 1985, a fundraising campaign was launched to purchase, renovate and expand the property.

What makes Catholic Charities “Catholic” is its foundation: Catholic social teaching.

“That is the guidepost to everything we do; we believe every human that walks through our door is made in the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity,” said Umo Udo, 57, Catholic Charities director of spiritual care. Udo said she works with clients to help them discover and clarify their own self-worth, values and spirituality through values formation and empowerment groups, Bible studies, one-on-one consultations and grief support groups.

“Catholic social teaching to Catholic Charities is like the legs of a table; without the legs, it’s not a table,” Udo said. “Every client that comes to us has some level of trauma, and everything that we do, we have to look at through that lens.”

Udo describes Catholic Charities as “providing hope even when it’s all stuck. I had a male client who had experienced so many losses, you couldn’t even believe. A lot of men don’t process grief, and when it’s too much to bear, they turn to drugs or alcohol. That was his demise.”

“He had a long beard and was quite a sight, but I ignored all of that, talked to him and listened,” Udo said. “His anger and despair began to dissipate. At the end, he asked if I could come back, which was significant as he was suicidal. … He had been given hope.”

Two weeks later, Udo returned and barely recognized the man. “He’d shaved his beard, cleaned up and looked 10 years younger,” she said. “He told me he’d heard of a place that gives clothes and food to people in need, and that he was going to volunteer there. Seeing this man unravel and come up from that abyss of hopelessness made for a very good day.”

Today’s need to confront the public health and economic implications of the novel coronavirus pandemic as well as the nation’s racial reckoning in the wake of the May 25 police-involved death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an African American, provide unique challenges and opportunities for Catholic Charities.

“Our challenge is how to really manifest spaces and places where people feel like they’re not only being provided opportunity, but an opportunity to see themselves and experience hope that’s bigger and brighter than just a handout,” said T. Mychael Rambo, a theater professional, adjunct University of Minnesota professor, Catholic Charities board member and past client who lived at the Dorothy Day homeless shelter in St. Paul for a few months in 1990 during a time of transition and need in his life.

“Dorothy Day was a strong tower for me. I found a safe space to be and collect my thoughts and at the same time, receive well-needed resources about how to transition out of there,” Rambo said.

Catholic Charities is working diligently to be a safe and healthy shelter and meal provider in the midst of COVID-19 and to meet the growing needs. This past year, the organization provided 530,000 nights of shelter and housing, and 1 million meals, thanks to 16,000 donors, more than 4,000 volunteers contributing 190,000 hours of service, and more than 500 staff members working around the clock.

Approximately 36% of Catholic Charities revenue comes from private contributions. “We receive financial and volunteer support from Catholics, parishes and many other faith organizations that are surprisingly diverse,” Marx said. “We urge our supporters to join us as advocates as well, based on that Catholic social teaching foundation for the common good, to mix ourselves up in the social and political debate that matters so much.”

“Private donations can’t hold the weight of the demands and needs,” said Anne Cullen Miller, 54, president of the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota based in St. Paul, the nation’s largest Catholic community foundation, whose gifts sustain many of the programs provided by Catholic Charities and other nonprofit organizations.

“Catholic Charities is focused on public-private partnerships and where they can move the dial, such as their work with Higher Ground and other efforts to put more housing units online,” Miller said. “And the need has never been greater.”

Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Founding

1869-1920

• 1869 A group from Assumption in St. Paul led by the pastor, Benedictine Father Clement Staub, establishes St. Joseph’s German Catholic Orphan Society for children left parentless by hazards of pioneer life, the Civil War and epidemics. In 1877, the society opened St. Joseph’s German Catholic Orphan Asylum in St. Paul, which was staffed by Benedictine sisters.
• 1878 The Minneapolis Catholic Orphan Asylum (later known as the Catholic Boys Home) opens; operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.
• 1887 Construction on the iconic “orphanage” building at 46^th and Chicago in Minneapolis is completed. It is the site of what eventually becomes St. Joseph’s Home for Children, also operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

Expansion

1920-1970

• 1920 The Catholic Central Bureau (later Catholic Welfare Services) was established in Minneapolis, as well as the Bureau of Catholic Charities (later known as Catholic Social Service) in St. Paul. They offer family relief, care of aging, child welfare and other critical services.
• 1960 The St. Paul and Minneapolis orphanages merge into what becomes known as St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis; operated by the Benedictines.
• 1968 Branch I opens, offering meals and daytime services. This marks the beginning of Catholic Charities providing emergency support to those most in need.

Service and advocacy

1970 – 2020

• 1977 Catholic Social Service of St. Paul, Catholic Welfare Services in Minneapolis, St. Joseph’s Home for Children and Seton Center consolidate into Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
• 1980s A national recession fuels significant growth in Catholic Charities’ work serving the “poorest of the poor,” including refugee resettlement in the wake of the Vietnam War.
• 1981 The Dorothy Day Center opens in St. Paul as a daytime storefront serving 50 men experiencing homelessness. Nearby Mary Hall is purchased to create a men’s shelter. A women’s shelter is added at Mary Hall in 1989.
• 1984 Catholic Charities’ Office for Social Justice is established; today it is located in the heart of Dorothy Day Place in downtown Saint Paul.
• 2012 Higher Ground Minneapolis opens, combining emergency and transitional shelter and permanent housing.
• 2019 Dorothy Day Place — a $100 million two-building campus in St. Paul — opens offering shelter, permanent housing and support services and serving 1,000 people per day.
• 2020 A $70 million, public-private partnership in Minneapolis is building “Exodus 2.0” residence for more than 200 people, including veterans, single adults and people with complex medical conditions.

— Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis