'Accident' results in explosion of services in Missouri Ozarks

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 19, 1996 by Pamala Schaeffer

"Accidents happen," as the saying goes, sometimes with happy results. To hear Franciscan Sr. Lorraine Biebel tell it, it was an accident that resulted in the gospel-based broad community network that has sprung up around her in the thick of the Bible belt - though it was an accident with a heavy pack of history.

The network began back in 1983 with a collision of two determined forces in search of a way to help the poor. One was Biebel, a nun in search of new ministry; the other was Bishop Bernard Law, former head of the Springfield, Mo., diocese, who went on to become a cardinal in Boston.

Law's request was simple: a soup kitchen for Springfield. He assigned the task to Biebel and gave her a check for $50. Biebel's response evolved into something quite complex.

"I always say we started with his $50 and haven't run out of money since," Biebel likes to report.

The program that evolved and has gained national attention has a down-to-earth name. It's simply called "the Kitchen." But many consider the effort quite heavenly - a host of services for poor and homeless people offered in the spirit of St. Francis by scores of volunteers and professionals, including some 50 area physicians. Today, Bernard Law's "soup kitchen" is an independent operation sprawling across three city blocks in Springfield. Its supporters include 50 area churches, 40 of them Protestant.

It's not just people directly connected with the Kitchen who are impressed.

The U.S. government singled out the program last year for a $1 million Housing and Urban Development grant and would have written up the program as a model, but for Biebel's resistance. She felt national publicity would have exacerbated conflicts with some neighboring Springfield businesses concerned about the Kitchen's expansion. The Kitchen offers far more than three meals a day, seven days a week. It provides short-term housing to some 2,500 people a year - more than half from the Ozarks region - in a former hotel, and long-term "transitional" housing to 18 families in new, furnished apartments.

Services include a medical and dental clinic, where professionals deliver free services to some 500 to 600 people each month. (It started as a van, parked in an alley behind the hotel, provided by the Sisters of Mercy who operate a hospital in the area.) There's a pharmacy stocked with donated physicians' samples and medication bought with funds from a United Way grant; a daycare center; programs for children and parenting classes for adults. Drug rehabilitation counselors, social workers and mental health professionals have offices on the premises, some earning salaries paid by cooperating institutions. Classes help people prepare to take the high school equivalency exam.

The Kitchen's "fresh start" program provides household supplies for families moving out on their own. Sr. Mary Ann Hackenmiller, a Dubuque, Iowa, Franciscan oversees a food distribution area where bags of emergency groceries are distributed to some 700 families a month. Sr. Julie Coyne, another Dubuque Franciscan, oversees the pharmacy and does therapeutic massage.

In a different part of the city, the Kitchen operates the Franciscan Villa, a retirement center for elderly and handicapped people, in the former St. John's Hospital building. It was offered for sale to the Kitchen by a new owner, the Assemblies of God, a Protestant Pentecostal denomination that has its world headquarters a few blocks from the Kitchen. The Assemblies of God agreed to carry the mortgage on the property.

Those who come to the Kitchen for help are asked few questions: one of few orders given by a nun who, in her history as an administrator, came to detest red tape.

For years Biebel was an administrator for her Franciscan order in Springfield, Ill., and for its hospital in that city. The hospital was large, the bureaucracy unwieldy, should come to feel. Twenty years ago, she turned 50 and decided it was time to refocus. The first step was a five-year sabbatical, beginning with an extended stay at a favorite retreat house, followed by six months in a hermitage on the banks of the Mississippi River south of St. Louis.

"It helped prepare me for what was coming," she said. Ready to move on but unsure where she was going, Biebel took a job as executive director of housekeeping in a small hospital in Litchfield, Ill., and drew together a community of six sisters from her order interested in outreach to the poor. For a year they met monthly "refocusing our vision, clarifying our goals," she said. They negotiated with their order's leaders and wrote to a number of bishops. "We were convinced that God wanted us to but unsure where she was going, Biebel took a job as executive director of housekeeping in a small hospital in Litchfield., Ill., and drew together a community of six sisters from her order interested in outreach to the poor. For a year they met monthly "refocusing our vision, clarifying our goals," she said. They negotiated with their order's leaders and wrote to a number of bishops. "We were convinced that God wanted us to live this vision we had," Biebel said. Law responded with an invitation. Springfield, Mo., is the center of a mission diocese; Catholics are a small minority and nuns are scarce. Law knew he would have no trouble putting six nuns to work.