Food shed part of St. Christopher’s Catholic identity

After the daily morning Mass, back in the years when he worked long hours as a professional electrician, Bob Rauch would watch in quiet admiration as two elderly men hauled boxes of parishioner-donated canned goods from the vestibule of St. Christopher Church to the “food shed” – a small building on parish grounds for the storage and assembly of emergency food for those who were having a tough time making ends meet.

All those decades ago, Rauch remembers saying to himself: “That’s what I would like to do when I retire and have more time.”

So last Advent, when Rauch’s pastor, Father Frank Candalisa, issued a call for St. Christopher parishioners to resuscitate the food shed after a three-year period of inactivity, the retired Rauch, 75, decided the time was now. The Holy Spirit was calling him to step up to the plate.

Distressing deficit identified
 
“You’d be shocked by the need for food,” said Rauch, one of nine members of the recently reorganized “St. Christopher Outreach” ministry that oversees the food shed and a weekday phone service for those who are in need of emergency help with groceries, utilities, medications, rent and other bills.

“We have mothers who find themselves separated from their husbands; people with medical bills; the elderly on fixed incomes; sudden job loss,” Rauch said. “It’s been an eye-opening thing for us to do this work. We try to help the people who are really in need.”

Children can act locally

While adults are the visible staffers of the food operation, the shed’s shelves and bins are filled largely by St. Christopher’s youngest faithful: children. Rauch estimates that youngsters contribute a whopping 95 percent of the ministry’s food stock.

“It’s the school kids; it’s the Girl Scouts; it’s the Boy Scouts; it’s the summer camp kids. The kids and their families are our biggest supporters,” said Rauch, who works with Carol Pond, St. Christopher School’s coordinator of religious education, to solicit donations from students when the shed’s supplies begin to dwindle.

A similar role is played by Rauch’s sister, Rose Denny, director of St. Christopher’s summer camp. Denny, who has overseen St. Christopher’s pre-school program for 35 years, recently asked camp families for their help in re-stocking summer supplies of basics such as dry beans, rice, tomato sauce, canned meats, vegetables and fruit, grits and peanut butter. In a letter to families, Denny stressed that participation was “strictly voluntary”; however, she and the camp staff were inundated.

“People are so kind-hearted,” Denny said. “The little kids love to carry in the bags (of food) because they feel like they’re helping.”

That help is adding up.

In the ministry’s first three months of operation after its revival last February, 1,000 pounds of food were given to those in greatest need. In that same time period, the ministry gave $12,000 in relief to the poor, the majority of the funds dropped anonymously into St. Christopher’s St. Anthony Poor Box and donated by parish groups such as the Men’s Club and the Knights of Columbus.

Parishioners can give conveniently throughout the year by placing non-perishable food in baskets located in the vestibule of the church. Boxes of food for those in need are tailored to a caller’s most pressing needs, and recipients are asked to pick up their box from the parish office if they are able to do so. If transportation is a problem, Rauch and his fellow ministers make the deliveries.

Rauch said even the youngest children have a visceral connection with hunger and enjoy helping others in this most basic way.

“It’s easier for them to understand the need for food,” Rauch notes. “I think they’d rather give food than money – not that they mistrust anybody with (their) money – but they know that food is always going to go directly to the people who need it.”

There, but for the grace of God, go I

Rauch has his own memories of challenging economic times, having grown up in New Orleans’ St. Thomas Housing Development in the 1940s and ’50s. His father worked two jobs to feed his four children and pay for their Catholic education at St. Alphonsus Elementary and Redemptorist High.

“My mom used to put turnips in the mashed potatoes to try to stretch the potatoes,” Rauch recalled. “I don’t remember ever being hungry, but we learned to appreciate where our food was coming from.”

Rauch, who continues to be a daily communicant, takes the daily donations of food to the shed after morning Mass. He said it is humbling to retrace the literal steps of the men who led the ministry at St. Christopher decades ago.

“I just thought it was so neat to see those guys doing that,” Rauch said. “I admired the people who did these kinds of charitable things much more than the people who were the athletes.”

For more information, call 831-7692. Food donations can be brought to St. Christopher Church, just inside the front entrance in the 3900 block of Derbigny Street, Metairie.

Beth Donze can be reached at [email protected].