They’re runaway teens. They sleep in alleys. And they don’t want you interfering.
How to alter their path?
For Sister Mary Rose McGeady, the approach is simple. Ask them a nonthreatening question.
Like: Would you like a hot meal?
“You can’t tell people to change their lives,” she said. “It needs to be done in a way that does not deprive them of their freedom. It’s absolutely amazing how kids respond to that.”
McGeady, who returned Covenant House to respectability and financial health after a sex and money scandal ousted its founder, will be honored Friday for Outstanding Catholic Leadership by the Catholic Leadership Institute in Philadelphia.
Now 77, McGeady uses a wheelchair after a bad fall at a Covenant House in California two years ago damaged the nerve in her left leg. She now lives at the DePaul Provincial House in Menands.
When the Catholic Church recruited her to run Covenant House, founded in Manhattan in 1972 to help homeless teens, McGeady told them: “I’ll do it until you find somebody else.”
Thirteen years later, the nonprofit child care agency had grown from 12 houses to 21, including sites in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras. And it had bounced back from a $38 million deficit that had accumulated under the Rev. Bruce Ritter. McGeady retired in 2003.
Along the way, McGeady, a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, became one of America’s best-known nuns, flying 100,000 miles a year to raise money, meeting with the Pope and President Clinton. The nonprofit child care agency has helped 2 million young people since it began.
“We still have the kids,” she told donors. “We still need your help. Please stay with us. There was this continuing demand and cities were begging me to come and open a Covenant House in their city.”
At Covenant House, McGeady added job-training and life-planning programs to help kids reach practical goals.
On her desk this week is a giant Halloween card from a former teen runaway named Tom who is now a taxi driver in Texas. McGeady routinely receives Mother’s Day cards from once homeless kids who consider her their adopted mother.
The kids themselves told McGeady what they needed, she said. “I used to ask them: What was it like? Were we meeting their needs?” They’d tell her about sleeping in the subway, stealing food from fruit stands.
Just walking around downtown Albany, you’ll find kids living on the street, McGeady added. “The key is to offer somebody who is probably on the verge of being ready (to change), offer them the opportunity to say yes in a way that’s not threatening.”
Having done that, she said, she feels she didn’t waste her life. Helping others isn’t about control, she added.
“If you’re going to help the people who are needy, you have to do it with love. That’s the most important ingredient.”
