Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face by Bruce Ritter Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face by Bruce Ritter. AKA John Ritter. Born: 25-Feb-1927 Birthplace: Trenton, NJ Died: 7-Oct-1999 Location of death: Decatur, NY Cause of death: Cancer - Lymphoma. Gender: Male Religion: Roman Catholic Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Matter of Dispute Occupation: Religion. Nationality: United States Executive summary: Disgraced priest. Military service: US Navy. "I am profoundly saddened by the allegations against me and the need to deny them constantly. I have no way of proving my innocence. My accusers cannot establish my guilt. I devoutly hope the inquiries under way will bring an end to this incredibly painful chapter in my life." A commissioned report by Kroll Associates determined that Father Bruce had engaged in sexual misconduct with runaway boys at Covenant House. Their report claimed that Ritter's sexcapades reached back to at least 1970. The church's subsequent plan to ship Father Bruce off to India was scrapped after it became known in 1991. Sister: Cassie Wallace Slept with: Kevin Lee Kite (according to Kite) Slept with: John P. Melican (according to Melican) Slept with: Darryl J. Bassile (1973-74, according to Bassile) Slept with: Paul Johnson (according to Johnson) Theological: St. Francis Seminary Theological: Assumption Seminary, Chaska, MN Theological: St. Anthony-on-Hudson, Renssalaer, NY Teacher: St. Anthony-on-Hudson, Renssalaer, NY Teacher: St. Hyacinth Seminary, Granby, MA Teacher: Manhattan College, Bronx, NY. Is the subject of books: Broken Covenant: The Story of Father Bruce Ritter's Fall from Grace , 1992 , BY: Charles M. Sennott. Author of books: Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face: The Story of America's Exploited Street Kids ( 1988 ) Covenant House: Lifeline to the Street ( 1989 ) ISBN 13: 9780384242142. Sometimes God Has a Kid's face is a heart rending memoir of America's sexual exploited street kids and ones mans fight to put an end to it. Despite being threatened mugged and beaten he continues providing a safe haven and the convent house grew. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Shipping: FREE Within U.S.A. Customers who bought this item also bought. Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace. 1. Sometimes God Has A Kid's Face. Book Description Condition: New. A+ Customer service! Satisfaction Guaranteed! Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 0384242146- 2-1. 2. Sometimes God Has A Kid's Face. Book Description Condition: New. book. Seller Inventory # MB000LH851I. 3. Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face. Book Description Condition: New. Quality Books. Because We Care - Shipped from Canada. Usually ships within 1-2 business days. If you buy this book from us, we will donate a book to a local school. We donate 10,000+ books to local schools every year. Seller Inventory # R09495S. 4. Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face Ritter, Bruce. Book Description Condition: New. New. Seller Inventory # Q-0384242146. Shop With Us. Sell With Us. About Us. Find Help. Other AbeBooks Companies. Follow AbeBooks. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face by Bruce Ritter. HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW. Book: Sometimes God Has a Kid’s Face. Author: Mary Rose McGeady. Publisher: Covenant House, 2010. Language level: 1. (1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity) Reading level: Teens and adults. Rating: 4 stars (GOOD) Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker. Disclosure: Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library. No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review. McGeady, Mary Rose . Sometimes God Has a Kid’s Face (published in 2010 by Covenant House, P. O. Box 96708, Washington, DC 20090). Recently, a copy of this small, paperback book was available in the waiting room while my truck was being serviced, so I picked it up and read the entire thing in one sitting. There are fourteen brief chapters telling the stories of fourteen children who had run away from or been thrown out of their homes, many of them having turned to sex, alcohol, or drugs to survive in the streets. All of them had come to Covenant House, which had been established in 1972 at Times Square, New York City, NY, to help abused and/or abandoned youngsters who had nowhere else to turn. It now serves 60,000 to 70,000 homeless kids a year in sixteen cities. Author Mary Rose McGeady, with the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul for over fifty years, is past President of Covenant House. The Introduction and Epilogue were written by Kevin Ryan who is the current President. The book also includes a Family Survival Guide to assist parents in preventing major problems with their teens. This book will tug at your heartstrings and make you aware of a very real but largely under-reported tragic situation in our society. A later book of letters by kids from Covenant House edited by Bruce Ritter with this same title is also available. attitude, vicissitude. . When I was in college, there were a few books I had acquired that I found comforting, somehow, in my turmoil over Xianity. One was a book about this woman named Peace Pilgrim, who basically carried out the mission on which Jesus had once sent out his disciples – namely, to live without resources of any kind, relying on the hospitality of other people and of God. I’ll have to catch up with her later. The other was a book called Sometimes God Has a Kid’s Face by a priest named Bruce Ritter. It was a collection of shamelessly manipulative letters Ritter had composed over a period of years to raise money for a charity he started called Covenant House – which still exists – ministering to homeless kids in New York City. I read that book over and over again for some reason. Like Peace Pilgrim, Fr. Ritter was someone who had given up his entire life in a kind of service to God. And he lived out, vividly, the conviction which Jesus tried to instill in us: that in the most miserable and apparently useless people, the Spirit of God is present, and to love such people is to show love to God. At some point in college I found out something that struck me powerfully. I don’t recall the news astonishing me, but rather that I resounded when I heard it, like a bell. Fr. Ritter had resigned in disgrace under accusations of sexual improprieties with young men. This is not as striking without an acquaintance with Ritter’s writings, which are filled with a kind of morbid awareness of the depravities children who were on the street in NYC would encounter. If the accusations were true, it meant that Ritter had come to embody the kind of sin with which he had been in direct combat for many years. It was also apparent from his writing that Ritter’s stance towards the kids who came to him for shelter was emotional and intimate. He didn’t just offer services dispassionately to those kids; he opened his heart to them, at the risk of his own emotional stability. I felt intuitively that I had something to learn from Fr. Bruce Ritter, from the intersection of extraordinary love and extraordinary transgression in one man. I always thought it would be great to find out what had happened to Ritter and try to reflect on his story more systematically. For some reason – and it would be interesting to know why this was – I got rid of my Peace Pilgrim book and my Covenant House book after holding on to them for many years. And that was the end of it – until shortly before Elijah’s first birthday. Out of nowhere, I had the impulse to look him up online; and sure enough, in less than a minute I had an obituary from the NYT that filled in a great deal of what I wanted to know about Ritter. Here it is. I don’t have much comment to add to it, except to say that I still think I could learn from him. In Quiet Fields, Father Ritter Found His Exile; By TINA KELLEY Published: October 22, 1999. The dying priest celebrated Mass every day alone in his chapel overlooking nothing but wooded hills and the clover field where he knew he would be buried. He worked in his garden, he wrote, and he visited with friends who had remained in touch despite his scandal-stained public life, 200 miles and one decade away. The Rev. Bruce Ritter, 72, died of cancer on Oct. 7, in near seclusion in this Otsego County town, population 356. In 1969, the Roman Catholic priest founded Covenant House, a shelter for homeless teen-agers that grew from two cold-water flats on the Lower East Side to a $90 million corporation with sites in 15 cities, the largest shelter network for homeless children in the country. Father Ritter resigned from the agency in 1990 amid allegations that he had sexual relationships with young men at the shelter and concerns about a secret trust fund, although after four investigations, he was never charged with a crime. In 1991, a lawsuit filed by one accuser was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired. For those who believed the allegations against him, the acts Father Ritter was accused of constituted a great betrayal: a crime against the most vulnerable children, an abuse of the power of the priesthood, an assault on a thriving charity and a slap in the face to the idealistic people he attracted into social work. For those who believe him to be innocent, he was exiled unjustly. Whatever his guilt or innocence, his friends say he rediscovered his priesthood in his final years, living alone in a beneficent landscape, putting up bluebirds’ houses behind his farmhouse overlooking the wooded hills 60 miles west of Albany. “He lived very quietly up here,” said Joseph J. Saccente, a former chief of staff at the Board of Education who retired to nearby Richmondville. Mr. Saccente knew Father Ritter because they were the only two who bought a New York City newspaper at Killenberger General Store, about four miles from the priest’s white house on Penksa Road. Shortly before Father Ritter died, Mr. Saccente took him vegetable soup that his wife, Dorothy, had made from locally grown tomatoes, zucchini and carrots. They had shared meals in each other’s homes, though the priest told the couple that he had not visited with anyone else in town. “He loved his house,” Mr. Saccente said. “He loved the serenity, and he appeared to be at peace with himself. It appears he was able to live without people.” Neighbors knew the priest as John, the name he was given at birth, before taking the name Bruce when he joined the Franciscans. Those who were acquainted with him at his rural retreat saw him as intelligent and empathic, a neighbor who walked a German shepherd and waved from his car. They were aware of his past, because stories had run in the local papers. But they did not shun him. Covenant House, from its modest conception, served a population that had previously fallen between the cracks: homeless teen-agers who either had run away from home or been kicked out. Many turned to drugs and prostitution and met grisly fates. After teaching in the theology department of Manhattan College in the Bronx, Father Ritter moved to the Lower East Side in 1968 to help homeless young people when six of them knocked on his door during a winter storm. At its height, Covenant House had grown to include a large shelter on West 41st Street, an outreach van with social workers who encouraged children to come in from the streets, and rooms for young people with AIDS, early in the epidemic. It spent three times more money on runaways than the Federal Government did. And Bruce Ritter was the force behind it — a charismatic, eloquent, persuasive, ambitious man who won the backing of the city’s most powerful politicians and deep- pocketed corporations. In December 1989, a former Covenant House resident accused him of offering financial benefits in return for sex. The priest had also created a trust fund of nearly $1 million, built mainly from his salary, which gave loans to several board members and the priest’s sister. In February 1990, he resigned, saying it was in the best interests of the agency. Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney, did not charge him with any crime. Mr. Abrams brought no charges against Covenant House over its handling of charitable contributions. But an investigation commissioned by Covenant House found extensive evidence that he engaged in sexual activities with residents of the shelter. Even if he did not, the report concluded, he “exercised unacceptably poor judgment in his relations with certain residents.” If he had not resigned, it concluded, he would have been required to leave. Though contributions plummeted after the scandal, Covenant House, which declined to comment on Father Ritter’s death, continues to help homeless teen-agers in the United States, Canada and Central America. A report from the Franciscans neither cleared nor condemned him, but the order demanded that he live in a friary and seek counseling. Father Ritter, who repeatedly denied the accusations against him, believed that seeking counseling would amount to an admission of guilt, said the priest’s former assistant at Covenant House, John Spanier. He left the order in 1990… Alan Ouimet, who had worked with Father Ritter in the Lower East Side and kept in close contact…said Father Ritter regretted his estrangement from the Franciscans. “Only two weeks before he died he was still saddened by the fact that they were absent in his life,” Mr. Ouimet said. About six years ago, Father Ritter moved into the farmhouse and began renovating it, after living in various places including Pound Ridge, N.Y. He supported himself with help from friends and with Mass stipends, money sent to a priest for saying Mass, acquaintances said. At the house, an old grindstone and buckets of petunias decorated the front yard, near a stand of weeping birches. Several windows were decorated with maple leaves that had been pressed between sheets of wax paper. The chapel that the priest had added to the house had tall windows overlooking a broad valley and contained a plain altar with candles, a seat and a table with a book lying open. A large, modern crucifix hung on the back wall. Father Ritter would visit St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass., each month and often went on a retreat for Holy Week, as he had done when he lived in the city… Father Ritter’s ashes were buried at a corner of the stone walls behind his house, under a statue of St. Francis… Mr. Spanier said two men were among those who spoke about Father Ritter at the funeral, one an attorney from Kentucky who had been helped through Covenant House when he was a teen-ager. The other was a marine who lived near the farmhouse and who said the priest had played an important role in his life, helping him make choices about school and joining the service. “They were bookends to the type of people Father was able to help and connect with,” Mr. Spanier said. User Search limit reached - please wait a few minutes and try again. 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