A loan in time helps a dream come true

It was a Sunday in March when my friend Carmen Barsody invited me into her home in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Her home was also home to Faithful Fools. Other guests that afternoon were students from the University of California at Berkeley. They had come to make a weeklong “street retreat” facilitated by the Faithful Fools staff. The retreat would help them come to know the people living in the neighborhood. Many of the neighbors they would be meeting were among the unsheltered of the city, people with limited options due to poverty and/or physical and mental health challenges. As the students gathered in a circle to share their experiences of that day and their hopes for the week ahead, it was clear that they also were being challenged as they began to face their own assumptions and to see people and things with new eyes.

Though I had initially known Carmen in Nicaragua in the early 1990s (a story for another time), that day I was learning about an important connection between Faithful Fools and Loretto. It was Kim Klein who, when on a street retreat in 1998, had first come to know Carmen, a Franciscan Sister from Little Falls, Minn., and her friend Kay Jorgensen, a Unitarian Universalist pastor. Kay was also known as the clown named Oscard. Together they had started Faithful Fools on April 1, 1998, with their ministry at that time being totally on the streets.

However, by early 2000, Carmen and Kay began to dream about having a space that could help gather those coming to make street retreats, thus allowing for more extended time and a place where the arts could flourish. In her March 2022 Interchange article, Kim explained how the Loretto Community became involved, offering Kay and Carmen a low-interest $100,000 loan that would allow them to rent and later purchase a building in San Francisco to further their ministry.

By 2022, Faithful Fools was debt free, and the Loretto Community (including Kim) continue to have a very special place in their hearts and in their history. Anyone able to visit them will be most warmly welcomed.