"And then there are the unsung heroes . . . . A person like Father Bruce Ritter is always there. His Covenant House programs . . . provide shelter and help to thousands of frightened and abused children each year."
--President Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, 1984
Father Bruce Ritter is not exactly unsung. On Tuesday, for example, he will be standing next to President George Bush in the White House accepting a Presidential Volunteer Action award on behalf of his Covenant House volunteers.
The singing, however, is not always that of one chorus in harmony. Most recently in Los Angeles, where Ritter has brought his Covenant House concept, the reaction to him has come close to cacophony. The mild-mannered, outspoken Franciscan priest who answered a knock on his door one night 20 years ago and gave shelter to six New York street kids has become a controversial figure.
Among charges frequently heard are that Ritter's Covenant House programs are too big to be adequately supervised, that Covenant House's well-oiled media and fund-raising approach frequently elbows out smaller programs--and is a reflection of Ritter's steadily enlarging ego--and that the program's philosophy of never turning a young person away is actually poor social work.
Ritter, who started his priestly life as a professor of medieval theology, is not a trained social worker. "Nothing I learned about the 14th Century prepared me for what I do now," he said. That lack of preparation, he acknowledges, is probably what made him get started in the first place. Not knowing about bureaucratic procedures, regulations and accepted theories, he ignored them.
He likes at times to paint himself as a sort of rube, ascribing some of the disagreement over his methods and motives to what he calls his political ineptitude. Other than that he explains it unapologetically: "If the corporate culture of an organization comes from the top, in a way what's embedded in Covenant House is a benign disregard of the status quo. We often bump our heads on that."
Perhaps because of a gift for public relations that seems innate, Ritter easily incorporates what is in vogue. Typically, he speaks of an upcoming trip to Manila and Bangkok as exploring the possibility of bringing Covenant House to the Pacific Rim.
The Pacific Rim is a long way from 1969, when Ritter began feeding and sheltering kids in his East Village apartment. He founded Covenant House as a licensed child-care agency in 1972, and by 1977 was in the Times Square area operating a 24-hour crisis shelter offering comprehensive services for street youth under 21. Later he began "Rights of Passage," a long-term residence program where those so motivated can begin the transition back to the mainstream.
Today there are Covenant Houses in Toronto, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, New Orleans, Anchorage, and several in Central America, all following the same model.
And if not quite a household word, Bruce Ritter is certainly known to the 650,000 households on his mailing list. His extraordinarily successful direct mail fund-raising brings in much of the $60 million annual budget for Covenant House's worldwide operations.
Although the organization has a paid nationwide staff of more than 1,000 and about 300 volunteers, supporters and detractors alike speak of Ritter and Covenant House almost interchangeably. They call Covenant House a haven, or a franchise operation ("McRunaway" as the Philadelphia Inquirer once called it). They describe it as a desperately needed service, or question the whole operation as a monument to Ritter's ego. Whatever it is, they tend to see it as Bruce Ritter's operation, one where he calls the shots and sets the tone.
New York's Mayor Ed Koch crossed swords with him publicly in 1987 when Ritter outbid the city, $33 million to $30 million, on a building Koch wanted for housing work-release prisoners. He accused Ritter of "dirty pool" and breaking the Golden Rule, then made peace and showed up for the building's dedication as Chelsea House, a 300-bed residence. Koch shrugged off the contretemps with a cheerful, "Never fool around with a priest. He'll always win."
In Boston, Covenant House was briefly established and then abandoned. Most attribute the departure to lack of support from the archdiocese and local opposition from smaller youth programs. Sister Barbara Whelan, director of Bridge Over Troubled Waters there, mirrored the comments of some others who criticize him, saying Covenant House shelters are too big to provide quality service, that the whole operation has become too media conscious and glitzy, that it frequently threatens the financial survival of smaller local programs, inadvertently forcing some to close, and that it comes on as the only game in town, arrogantly refusing to network.
