Hope House Origin Story

In this episode of Hopecast, Father Francis Pizzarelli, SMM, shares the origin story of the chain of events and community interactions that led him to start Hope House Ministries 46 years ago in Port Jefferson, NY and how those humble beginnings laid the foundation for what has grown to an organization that has helped thousands in their respective journeys to recovery.

Believe in the Power of Hope!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to another edition of Hopecast. My name is Father Francis Pizzarelli. I'm the founder and executive director of Hope House Ministries. In recent years, people have asked me why and how did you start Hope House Ministries? It's an interesting story, and it goes back almost 47 years. I was assigned as a parish priest to Infant Jesus with the purposes of saving their Catholic school, which was on the verge of closing, and also to start a youth ministry program. I got very involved in the community, very involved working with young people, very involved as a social worker working with young people at risk. I was there not even a few months, and I got a phone call Thanksgiving weekend from the local precinct asking me to meet them at a family's home. And it was a family's home overlooking the sound. And I made my way there, being new in the neighborhood, and as I pulled onto their street, I saw three police cars in their driveway. I pulled behind the cop cars. I got out. I recognized his very distraught father who was standing on his porch. I recognized him from church. He could barely look at me, and he asked me if I would go into his son's room. I said, absolutely. I walked into the man's son's room, and there were three police officers standing around the man's son. They had just cut him down. He had hung himself. He was ten years old. Nothing in the seminary or my graduate work at Catholic U prepared me for that moment. I saw the rope burns around that little boy's neck. There was no nope. His parents said he was a good boy, a good student in school, but obviously a little boy in so much pain that the only way to deal with his pain was to take his own life. You know, when someone commits suicide, it's not because they want life to be over. They just want the pain to stop. His parents asked if I would celebrate his Mass of the Angels. And I did that. And the church was packed to standing room only with people from the community who came to support this grieving family. And as I looked out at this community that was numb at the senseless loss of this little boy's life, I said to myself, every time someone takes their life, in some way we as a community have to take responsibility because we were blind. We did not see the cries for help. We did not recognize that little boy's pain. And that caused me to look at life differently. That weekend at the teen mass, which I started when I first came in 1979, I shared that story. And the young people in the church were numbed. A number of them waited afterwards to do two things, to thank me for all that I was doing for them in terms of youth ministry. And then a senior turned to me and said, And father, what's the church doing about all of this? I couldn't answer him. I was barely in my mid-twenties at the time. Went back to the rectory where I lived. And I tossed and turned the entire night. And I became a Montfort missionary because St. Louis de Montfort did what the church wasn't doing. That was his mission. To walk in places where the church did not want to walk for all kinds of nonsensical reasons. And I realized in the brief time that I was in the community, growing number of issues around young people at risk. And at the time there were little or no services. So I decided to have a town meeting because I felt that I needed support. People that were twice my age left and said, no one's going to come to a town meeting in Port Jefferson. 150 people came to that meeting, and that meeting gave birth to the first Hope House, which was a house for runaway teenagers between the ages of 16 and 21. I rented the guest house on the grounds of Little Portion Friary, where we now have a 50-bed long-term residential treatment program for addiction. Never did I think that my journey would lead me to do that, and that for 46 years I would still be doing that. But I trust in Providence. And we continue to reach out to the most vulnerable in our midst, continue to walk with people who have lost their children because of suicide, because of overdose, because of other reckless choices that endanger human life and too often take it. Because we continue to stigmatize people because of various social issues. And so I feel my call as a Montfort missionary priest is to challenge that to remind people that change is possible and that hope really does spring eternal. But we have to support one another on the journey. And I've been blessed. Never did I think that Hope House Ministries would be what it is today as a young priest 46 years ago in the Chapel of St. Charles at the first mass with a few hundred people. Never did I think when I met with the brothers whose guest house I rented and told a white lie because I didn't have the check for the rent that I would be sitting here sharing this story today. For me, it encourages me every day to say yes to one of the greatest gifts of my life, but also the greatest challenges. Because it's hard. It's hard because the bureaucracy is heartless. It too often is just concerned about bottom lines and not about people. It sets people up for failure and not empowering them to wellness and wholeness. And that's her mission. Thanks for listening.