WARWICK Filmmaker Gerry Straub once earned buckets of money and hobnobbed with Hollywood's rich and famous. But on April 4, about 100 Bishop Hendricken High School students listened as he gave an impassioned appeal to help wipe out poverty. It was the conclusion of a five-day whirlwind tour of several Catholic schools and colleges in Rhode Island.
Straub visited last year as well to talk about his new life mission: Raising awareness of poverty and suffering through the films he writes and produces as a result of visiting some of the poorest places in the world.
Campus minister Steve Crawford extended the invitation, and said there could be no more appropriate time than during Lent.
Tuesday, Straub made his presentation before the entire school, but the Friday program was for students who had signed up for a service project to help combat homelessness in Rhode Island.
Tom Gambardella, the school's director of Christian service, explained that these students had signed up for a sleep-out, and though rain prevented their sleeping outdoors under cardboard boxes as originally planned, they would make sandwiches throughout the night for delivery to the St. Francis Soup Kitchen in Providence in the morning. A walk for hunger, which last year raised about $15,000 for community food kitchens, would follow that.
Friday, Straub let his film on poverty in Philadelphia which he noted is called the "city of brotherly love" do the talking.
"Room At the Inn," focuses on St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen operated by the Franciscan Friars in the poorest section of Philadelphia, a city where, according to 2003 statistics, 22 percent live below the poverty line and 30 percent of women and children are poor.
"Hunger hurts," said Straub. "It increases anxiety, humiliates, leads to violence and causes families to break up."
The filming of the hungry and those who serve them took place a week or two before Christmas. For about an hour, viewers, in graphic detail, learned what it really means to be "throwaway people."
One man lived in an abandoned building with no windows, doors or heat during a time when temperatures were 18 degrees with a wind chill factor well below zero. The man spoke of being afraid to sleep because the rats, which infested the building, were seeking warmth and they might nest in his open mouth as he slept.
"It happens," he said, turning to the camera. He also feared the rodents might bite off his nose while he slept, something which he also knows happens. Beds in shelters were all full, he said, and had been for days. Straub, obviously touched by the man's plight and shocked by the conditions in which he and other homeless were living, found it "incomprehensive how a human being could be staying there. People are sleeping there. It's unconscionable. People are living an urban nightmare. There are no windows or doors yet it is only a few miles from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell a few miles from the seat of democracy."
Viewers meet several of the homeless living in Philadelphia; some explain how circumstances led to their impoverishment. Others are too ill, or too old, or too high on drugs to talk. From drugs to disabilities the factors leading to poverty are as varied as the people Straub films.
The film also features one of the Franciscans who has devoted his life to serving the poor of Philadelphia, Father Michael Duffy. Father Duffy, the director of St. Francis Inn, talks with many of the guests, comforts them and even delivers food to a woman and her family, when he noticed her several days' absence from the soup kitchen. Driving to her home, the priest said, "I'm delivering food to a family living in deplorable conditions."
And they were, living in an apartment in horribly rundown condition heated by an electric stove in the kitchen and notoriously dangerous kerosene heaters in other rooms an apartment with two non-functioning toilets plugged by human waste and a tenant with no money to pay to have them fixed. The woman pays $151 a month for the apartment. Six children, five grandchildren and a mentally-challenged sister live with her. One of her children suffers from seizures and is in the hospital in a coma. That is why she hasn't been to the inn for food, she said.
The film concluded with an update on several of the homeless the audience met. Two, including the woman, had died of illness; a third had been beaten to death on the streets.
Straub addressed the Henricken students,. "You cannot change the world by changing the world; change yourself and the world will change."
He said that the two visits he made to the inn in Philadelphia "taught me about poverty; poverty taught me about myself and the freedom that comes with giving our lives away."
"Poverty is painful, but there are seeds of hope in the total dependence on God. Only empty hands can hold God's hands," he said.
While the statistics are brutal with half of humanity living on less than $2 a day, Straub said the students should see the faces and learn the details about those who live in chronic poverty. If they cannot afford to monetarily support them, he said, they should volunteer at a soup kitchen and if they cannot even do that, they can at least humanize the homeless person by offering him a smile. Jesus, he said, showed us that the way home is found through love. "How we live our lives is the litmus test" of finding our home in heaven.
(This article originally appeared in The Providence Visitor)
