Word: ritter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thousands of runaway teenagers in New York City and other urban areas, Covenant House is the home that compassion built. Now the man who founded the nation's most successful program for runaways is himself in need of compassion. Father Bruce Ritter, 61, the energetic Franciscan who built Covenant House largely on the basis of his own charisma, has been accused by four young men of having sexual relationships with them while they were under his care...
Last week Ritter was forced to step down as president of Covenant House while the allegations are investigated by state and local prosecutors and his religious order. Whether or not the probes result in formal charges, says an observer close to the church, "the chances of Father Ritter returning to Covenant House are zero...
Fortunately, the organization that Ritter created seems strong enough to survive his departure. One of the last remaining bulwarks against the New York City notion that nothing need be done because nothing can be done, Ritter personifies Covenant House in the minds of the 800,000 donors on his mailing list. Last year Covenant House's budget was $85 million, three times what the Federal Government spends annually on programs for runaways...
...Holy Thursday in 1968 that Ritter abandoned the comfortable life of a chaplain and a professor of theology at Manhattan College for the mean streets of the city's Lower East Side. Challenged by a student to practice the good works he preached, Ritter responded with a colorful act of muscular Christianity: he paid $50 to a couple of toughs to scare drug dealers into vacating their apartments. He used the space to house homeless children. Later he opened a shelter for runaways in a three-room hovel on East Seventh Street and solicited money to help the hundreds...
Over the years, Ritter gradually expanded the operation to a paid staff of 1,700 and about 2,000 volunteer workers. In 1984 President Reagan called Ritter an "unsung hero" in his State of the Union address. George Bush, who considers Ritter one of the brightest of the nation's "thousand points of light," visited his Times Square center last June...