One evening, while visiting my closest friend from undergrad at Fordham University, she answered a phone call from a ‘friend.’ The caller was a homeless man, friend of Sant’Egidio, whom she meets each Tuesday. He calls her often, and she always answers. Sharing her phone number with him deviated from the protocol, but keeping in touch throughout the week was more important to her. I thought that Pope Francis would have commended her commitment to accompaniment. I certainly wa

One crisp April evening earlier this year, at the usual Sant’Egidio round of friendship at Westminster Cathedral, our group met a woman with a three-year-old daughter. She was an Eritrean refugee recently arrived in London with nowhere to stay and no one to turn to. Let’s call her Victoria and her daughter Faith for anonymity. Victoria spoke very little English, just enough to communicate the precariousness of her situation. Faith was a genuine bundle of joy. She was laughing

The Vagrancy Act, a law that for nearly two hundred years made it a criminal offence simply to sleep rough or to beg, was repealed. We are thrilled.