Home > MetNews

Campus church feeds, clothes Denver homeless
By John McEvoy
jmcevoy@mscd.edu

Photo by John McEvoy • jmcevoy@mscd.edu Volunteers at St. Elizabeth’s Church hand out water and food to homeless people in the alley behind the Central Classroom building.

For more than 50 years St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church has been helping feed and clothe the homeless, hungry and needy.

Nearly every day of the year the Auraria soup kitchen opens its doors at 11 a.m. to provide freshly made sandwiches and soup to an average of 80 to 100 people per day.

Each morning a different team of six to 10 volunteers arrive to assemble sandwiches, make soup and coffee, and portion out desserts and other foods.

The church used to buy supplies from a local food purveyor and was spending almost $3,000 per month.

“About a year ago we were wondering if we were going to be able to keep both the soup kitchen and the church going,” said Dee Perez, one of the kitchen’s nearly 200 volunteers.

To help cut costs, several of the church’s volunteers now go to wholesale stores in order to keep both the church and the soup kitchen operational, Perez explained. This has helped cut the soup kitchen’s costs nearly in half.

Through word of mouth and diligent work by the volunteers, the kitchen has also been able to acquire free food, Perez said.

“When companies have food that is near expiration, they donate it to us,” she explained.

Other contributions in the form of fresh produce come from Whole Foods, and recently Old Chicago donated some frozen homemade meatballs, Perez said. The church also pays a reasonable price for food from the Food Bank of the Rockies, and there is a small subsidy from the government in the form of six boxes of peanut butter and a couple of boxes of refried beans.

Food is not the only thing the kitchen receives for free. Perez recently convinced the trustee of an estate to donate a dozen bags of clothes for distribution to anyone who needs clean clothes or help keeping warm.

The food bank and church also negotiate for donations with other parishes in the Denver area that do not have a homeless problem, volunteer Jim Brisnehan said. These parishes include Queen of Peace in Aurora, Spirit of Christ in Arvada and Christ on the Mountain in Lakewood.

“The Knights of Columbus also donate about $2,500 a year,” Brisnehan said.

St. Elizabeth’s was dedicated in 1898, and its mission statement is a quote from the Bible: “If you love me, feed my sheep.”

“We would like to see it go another 100 years,” Perez said about the church and its charity work.

For information on joining the volunteers or making a contribution, contact Lauretta Proulx at (303) 534-4014.