The article by Peter Tran highlights how Redemptorists around the world live out their mission by serving the poor, abandoned, refugees, migrants, and vulnerable through shelters, schools, healthcare, housing, and pastoral care. Through ministries such as Sarnelli House in Thailand, Mercy Centre in Bangkok, People’s Place in New York, and refugee outreach in the US, they restore dignity, hope, and opportunity to marginalized communities. At its heart, the Redemptorist charism is a call to stand with the poor in compassion and solidarity, seeing Christ in those most neglected by society.
Many Redemptorists have reached out to disadvantaged and vulnerable peoples in mission territories, while others have ventured into ministerial projects that serve the economically poor in the United States. Here are some of their stories.
Sarnelli House, Thailand
In the 1990s, when Redemptorist Fr. Michael Shea began his work with HIV/ AIDS patients in Nong Khai, Thailand’s northeastern province that borders Laos, he took one boy and two girls into his care. The missionary priest from Wisconsin recalled that the boy’s moth- er had committed suicide. The mother of one of the girls had died of AIDS. The other girl’s mother had abandoned her daughter because her husband had AIDS. That was how Sarnelli House Foundation came into existence. At the time, the younger girl was three. Now, she has finished college as a physical education teacher.
Sarnelli House, officially opened in 1999, is “home” for children with HIV/ AIDS who have been abandoned or subjected to sexual abuse. Today, Sarnelli House is used as both the umbrella name for Fr. Shea’s projects and the name of one of the seven houses under his care.
In the early days of his ministry, Fr. Shea said people with AIDS were often banished from their villages and ostracized by their families and neighbors because of fear of and ignorance about the disease. He recounted that they were forced to leave
their homes to live in hovels in the jungle where the Redemptorists brought them food, medicine, and pastoral care. Likewise, many children had been cast out by their relatives because their parents had contracted AIDS. “We are a place of safe refuge that is filled with love and understanding for every child who lives there,” said Fr. Shea.
Mercy Centre, Bangkok
About 380 miles south of Nong Khai, a six-year-old took part in the third- year kindergarten graduation at a school run by the Human Development Foundation Mercy Centre in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum. She grew up sleeping at night on the pavement of a gas station with her parents, who pumped gas. Now, she lives in one of the Mercy homes for children.
Parents with no legal documents left their sick child in the hospital. A nurse who lived near Mercy Centre contacted a staff member to let her know of the abandoned girl. Today, she not only has a home, but new friends and a new life. The Mercy Centre began in 1972 with Redemptorist Fr. Joe Maier and Sr. Maria Chantavarodom. At that time, the slum included an enclave of poor Catholics who earned a living butchering pigs for the market. Today, the area is home to more than 100,000 residents living in tight quarters in dilapidated tin-roofed houses. In the beginning, Sr. Chantavarodom taught catechism to the Catholic children who didn’t go to school; the few who did go to school either failed their classes or dropped out. So, Fr. Maier and Sr. Chantavarodom turned a shack in the slaughterhouse into a preschool.
The foundation today has twenty- two Mercy kindergartens with more than 2,000 students. The alumni of that first slaughterhouse kindergarten are now teachers, business owners, secretaries, street vendors, and taxi drivers. Under Fr. Maier’s leadership, the foundation now operates five Mercy homes for children, providing a refuge for 150 abandoned, orphaned, and trafficked children. They also established a school for street and special-needs children as well as a drop-in community center for the elderly, the disabled, adults living with HIV, troubled children, or anyone else in need.
People’s Place, Kingston, New York
Amy was a late-20s single mom in 1977 who came regularly to People’s Place in Kingston, seeking assistance. Founded by Redemptorist Fr. Patrick McGarrity (1936–2022), People’s Place provided Redemptorist seminarians who were studying at Mount Saint Alphonsus Seminary with the opportunity to do some social-pastoral work. For almost two decades, the seminarians took turns running the storefront, offering food, clothing, transportation, education, and guidance to the poor in the area. Amy helped the Redemptorists run the store in gratitude for the support she received. She obtained her GED through an education program sponsored by People’s Place and eventually earned a nursing
degree to work at Kingston Hospital. The mission of People’s Place today is the same as what the Redemptorists envisioned more than fifty years ago. Chris-
tine Hein, executive director of People’s Place, said, “Our purpose is to operate solely to fulfill our charitable mission of feeding and clothing individuals while providing hope, support, and assistance with life events. We respond to the essential needs of the people in Ulster County with kindness, compassion, and the preservation of human dignity.” In 2024, People’s Place served more than 1.6 million meals.
She also said that in 1985, when the Redemptorists moved to Washington, DC, the management of People’s Place was transferred to twenty-five volunteers. This nonprofit organization now has more than 185 volunteers, a small staff, and a board of directors that help continue the original Redemptorist mission of assisting people in Ulster County.
Holy Name Housing Corporation, Omaha, Nebraska
In the early 1980s, former Redemptorist Frs. Jerry Mullin and Don Neureuther were assigned to Holy Name Parish in north central Omaha. The two young priests began a housing ministry by asking residents who lived near the church to express their concerns. One
issue was the deterioration of homes, which decreased property value and threatened their neighborhood. When a donated run-down house was sold—after employing residents in need of work to rehab it using repurposed materials—Holy Name Housing Corporation was born. Since 1983, the organization has renovated and sold more than 200 homes. With a background in plant maintenance, Br. Bill Cloughley joined his two Redemptorist confreres in this housing endeavor. He said that the program appealed to many interests in the com- munity: city officials wanted to turn a deteriorated area back into taxable property; residents were happy to get rid of eyesores in their neighborhood; and impoverished people saw the possibility of home ownership.
According to Matthew Cavanaugh, executive director of Holy Name Housing Corporation, “We currently have nearly 400 units of affordable housing under management. This allows us to reach out to our low-income residents and support them with resources such as home-ownership training and budgeting classes. Many of the affordable units we build are single-family homes, and it is often our goal to transition our renters into owners by helping them purchase the home they are currently renting.” He noted that his team is now engaged in every aspect of providing affordable housing: “We act as project developers and general contractors, and we own and manage our units.”
Reflecting a relationship with the Redemptorists, Cavanaugh stated, “Our history with the Redemptorist Order and the tenets of Catholicism are foundational to our mission and our work today. Though we provide our ser- vices without favor to faith, creed, or religion, the Redemptorist charism of ‘working with the poor and the most abandoned’ aligns directly with our belief that we need to be a part of the community to be of value to the com- munity. We support the communities in which we work by helping people remain in or return to the place they can call home.”
Migrant Ministry, USA
Redemptorists are well known for their outreach to the poor and most abandoned in the migrant and refugee community. A pioneer in this work was Fr. Jimmy O’Connell (1914–1986), who began following the stream of migrant workers in the Midwest and Southwest more than eighty years ago. Fr. O’Connell gave Redemptorist seminarians an opportunity to participate in this ministry through a summer program in which they helped with the liturgy, visited families, and taught catechism to migrant children. One of the seminarians who participated was Fr. Hugh “Ricardo” Elford (1938–2023), who spent his life working with Hispanics in the barrio of Tucson and along the US–Mexico border. He became a pillar of the Hispanic community, advocating for refugees fleeing from persecution in Central America in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, providing the poor with food, clothing, and shelter. In 2003, he and Dr. Evan Kligman founded Clinica Amistad to offer free healthcare to the unemployed and uninsured, those with undiagnosed chronic medical conditions, and low-income families who could not afford medications. Redemptorists continue the legacy of Frs. O’Connell and Elford today.
Among them are Fr. Mike McAndrew, who published his experiences in Walk With My People: A Life in Migration Ministry (Liguori Publications, 2024), and Fr. Patrick Keyes, who works with his Redemptorist confreres in Mexico City. He said he spends most days at La Santisima Trinidad, “an iconic church in the middle of one of the oldest, noisiest, and poorest areas in the city.”
Lao Refugee Mission Team, USA
Redemptorists got involved in ministry for Southeast Asians in Chicago and around the country when millions of refugees were resettled in the United States after the fall of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1975. The Lao Refugee Mission Team was formed in the mid- 1980s with former Redemptorist Fr. Peter Tran, Paris Foreign Mission Fr. Luis Leduc, and Sr. Alice Thepouthay, a Lao Charity Sister of St. Joan Antida. As the only Lao-speaking priests and sister at the time, their missions across the US and Canada included prayer ser- vices, confessions, and Mass. They also visited families in the Lao, Hmong, and Khmu communities to discuss their adjustment to life in the US. Bishop Pierre Bach, MEP (1932–2020), appointed by Pope St. John Paul II to serve Laotians scattered around the world, travelled with the Lao Mission Team, as did former Redemptorist missionary in Thailand, Fr. Wil Lowery (1923–2021), until his retirement in 2009.
Fr. Tran also helped set up the In- do-Chinese Catholic Center to serve Vietnamese and Lao communities in uptown Chicago. The Center assisted refugees in finding jobs and housing and provided pas toral care. In the mid-1980s, the Redemptorist Denver Province offered an interest-free loan to a nonprofit uptown recycling center that Fr. Tran helped establish.
Former refugees were hired to work at the recycling center, and it supported elderly refugees who collected recyclables in neighborhood alleys.
Redemptorist ministry to the refugee community continues to this day. Since 2018, Redemptorist Fr. Chakrit Micaphitak from Thailand serves hill tribe refugees—Karen, Karenni, Hmong, and Lao—from Myanmar and Laos in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Father Micaphitak is one of two Hmong priests in the United States. After his ordination in 2006, he spent his ministry with other Redemptorists in Thailand’s mountainous provinces, serving some 2,000 Catholics in seven- teen rural villages. He said that these refugees remind him of “sheep without a shepherd,” adding that, as a Redemptorist, he is called to serve the “most abandoned.”
Prayer, Reflection, Charism
Asked to reflect on the Redemptorists’ work with the poor, Br. Cloughley said Redemptorists discern among them- selves, pray together, and then share how they can respond to the poor. “Our vocation is to be with the poor.
The question is, how can we creatively respond to the poor around us?”
Asked to define what a “good priest” should be, Fr. Shea said, “Like the Lord Jesus, a good priest should lose himself in service and lead a simple life of faith. He should eagerly serve the poor, the sick, and the elderly, especially those who are considered outcasts by society.
Redemptorist priests generally work among the poor, love the poor like one would love Jesus, and treat the poor as one would treat Jesus.”
Father Keyes said, “As Redemptorists, we are called not simply to evangelize the poor, but also to be evangelized by them.”
Father Maier said he was grateful that the Redemptorists had been generous and supportive of his presence in the slaughterhouse after all these years. The slum is a “salvage place drenched in mercy, and the poor have taken good care of me, looked after me. We stand together with the poor. It’s basically this—my door is always open to whoever we meet on life’s path. We don’t abandon anyone.”
In my association with Fr. Elford, I know he always lived by this pas- sage from Proverbs 31:8–9: “Open your mouth in behalf of the mute, and for the rights of the destitute; Open your mouth, judge justly, defend the needy and the poor!”
Through the charisms given by the Holy Spirit, may the Church continue to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and uphold the dignity of the poor and needy by defending their rights.
Peter Tran
(Peter Tran, MRE, MDiv, was the assistant director of the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson, Arizona. He is a former editor of the Union of Catholic Asian News at the main editorial office in Bangkok. During his years as a Redemptorist, his ministry was extensively in the field of pastoral care for refugees and migrants in the United States and at the Vatican. He professed his temporary vows as a Redemptorist in 1973.)
courtesy of Liguori Publications / The article has been published in “Liguorian” issue of May-June 2026 (www.liguorian.org)
