Thousands of pilgrims have come to worship this week in a massive and modern convention center in the central district of Quito, Ecuador, during the Church’s International Eucharistic Congress, a global gathering held once every four years.
The pilgrims say they’ve come to pray together at the celebration of Holy Mass, to be catechized and encouraged, and to be strengthened in faith by the communion of Christians assembled together.
Those pilgrims have been welcomed by the bishops of Quito, by Vatican cardinals, by an emissary of Pope Francis, and even by Ecuador’s civic leaders. Most come from South or Central America, but some pilgrims have come from much further — from Oceania, from Africa, from Europe.
But far outside that central district, in the hills climbing towards Andean peaks in Quito’s poor southwest, a small group of Catholics prepares — every single night— to welcome a different kind of traveler.
They’re the staff and volunteers at Albergue San Juan de Dios, a center for refugees, for families, and for the poor — for people who have no place to go, and are looking to come in from the cold of Quito’s night air.
For the staff and volunteers at Albergue San Juan de Dios, those people are Christ — and the center aims to welcome them as they might welcome the Lord.
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The center was founded in 1987 by the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, a religious order with more than 1,000 vowed members around the world, most of them brothers.
The order’s apostolic work is a kind of hospitality for the poor, and for the sick. The community’s namesake saint, its founder, had a dramatic religious conversion in the early 1500s, after spending his early years as a soldier. After he found Christ, John of God spent years caring for the indigent sick in hospitals and hospices. He died in 1550 of pneumonia, reportedly after plunging into a river to save a young man from drowning.
John of God drew followers and companions to his way of life. In the decades after he died, those men saw their community approved by the Church as a mendicant institute of consecrated life. Their mission was to live the beatitudes, by caring for the indigent and the sick.
In Quito, that mission is lived in a large center, where nearly 200 people are welcomed each evening into a shelter with clean dormitory-style rooms, family housing, psychological and medical services, job training, and a network of social workers able to provide guests with access to other community and government resources.
Getting government grants is a byzantine process in Ecuador, and even when grants are secured, the money is often slow to come through. While it costs $120,000 a month to keep Albergue San Juan de Dios running, the center is entirely privately funded, mostly by Quito residents who’ve committed to becoming monthly supporters of the project.
Many guests — probably most, officials estimate — are refugees, coming to Ecuador to flee ongoing violence in Colombia, or the crushing poverty and food shortages of Venezuela. Some families have settled in Ecuador, making it their home, while other center guests will likely migrate eventually northward, with many hoping to eventually find a place in the United States.
But regardless of their status, guests are welcomed each evening for a dinner cooked by the center’s professional kitchen, which churns out hundreds of meals daily, along with food packets distributed to families living in the neighborhood.
The kitchen staff also run a three-month training program, through which participants learn the skills, and get the credentials, to find work in restaurants or bakeries.
There is no alcohol at Albergue San Juan de Dios, nor drugs, and violence is strictly prohibited. When they arrive each evening, center guests check in their bags and luggage into a locked area, before they shower and are offered clean clothes, donated by parishes in the area.
Mass is offered only weekly, but the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God see to it that spiritual conversation and guidance is available in a small chapel whenever guests want to talk.
Perhaps the spiritual and social hub of the center is a wing on the second floor, where 37 adults with significant intellectual disabilities live permanently. They are the only permanent residents at the Albergue San Juan de Dios. Center staff members tell The Pillar that none of them have families able, or willing, to care for them.
At Albergue San Juan de Dios, those residents form a community of joy. When guests visit them soon after lunch, they offer warm greetings, blessings, handshakes, and effusive conversation.
Those residents spend time each day in physical therapy programs, in courses and catechetical sessions offered by local volunteers. An especially popular program couples hymn singing with clips shown from films about the life of Jesus.
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On the first floor, families new to Albergue San Juan de Dios sit each day on benches in a large waiting area, for a meeting with a social worker, or a doctor, or even to see a therapist.
One family, recently arrived in Ecuador from Colombia, explains that a young daughter has cerebral palsy, and Albergue San Juan de Dios is the only place to provide medical care.
Another, a family from Venezuela, says they’re hoping to participate in a job training opportunity.
Next to the waiting area, a children’s play center — a kind of a daycare — began operations in June. There are already plans to expand its offerings.
In fact, there are a lot of plans at Albergue San Juan de Dios.
Staff see ways everywhere to do more for their guests, or to provide them more opportunities. There’s talk of a commercial laundry operation staffed by people living in the area. There are plans to make family guest rooms more accommodating to children. There are ways to pack more food for families, and to involve guests in the process. But all of that depends on fundraising.
Everything at Albergue San Juan de Dios depends on fundraising — and fundraising, staff members insist, depends on Providence.
One staff member tells The Pillar that the charism of hospitality — the charism of the entire center — is “to show guests their dignity, by the way we welcome them, and see their needs, and then try to meet those needs with love for them.”
Indeed, at Albergue San Juan de Dios, love seems to be the only thing never in short supply.
