Compassion Corner officially opens its new Downtown location

Catholic Charities CEO Susan Rauscher called Thursday’s official opening of Compassion Corner, Downtown, a historic moment for the organization she leads.

And she wanted the audience gathered in its auditorium to join in celebrating it by writing a note of hope and prayers for the people it serves. Those messages, she explained, will be part of a time capsule for its future leaders and staff.

Rauscher started it off with a copy of Catholic Charities’ mission statement and guiding principles, and each speaker contributed a remembrance. Where the capsule will be placed – the building’s Lending Library – has a direct link to her: It has been created in memory of the Rev. Frank Almade, the priest who hired her to work for the diocese, and it houses his books and memorabilia.

The new “campus of healing” at 111 Boulevard of the Allies enables Catholic Charities and its partners to work and connect with the Gift of Mary, a new nonprofit temporary shelter for women escaping violence and abuse that is part of the Red Door ministry of Divine Mercy Parish, located at the St. Mary of Mercy Church building at 202 Stanwix St. 

Catholic Charities announced the $17 million capital campaign in May. The silent phase of the campaign paid for the former Diocese of Pittsburgh building purchase and started the needed renovations. Of the total, $4 million has been earmarked for Gift of Mary.

All services offered at its prior Ninth Street location moved with it, and Catholic Charities added some new or expanded programs and services “designed to provide the most vulnerable members of the community a path to stability,” according to a news release: additional medical and dental care through the Free Health Care Center, telecommunications training through the Gismondi Job Training Program, crisis case management, mental wellness programs, food services and more.

Rauscher said the campaign enabled Catholic Charities staff to work with many legislators on the project, creating a collaboration of nonprofit and governmental services that started back when it launched that Free Health Care Center, including state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills. He served on the Catholic Charities board with her, and she said he and former state Rep. Mike Turzai “moved all kinds of mountains” to help the nonprofit open it.

Costa’s connection to Catholic Charities started in 2007. He said he believes government officials have an obligation to work with organizations like it that provide community members with much needed health care. The new Compassion Corner will provide an opportunity for people to obtain “the help and support they need with dignity.”

“This is a building of hope. It’s a place of hope for folks, more than just a building” Costa said.  

Mayor Ed Gainey continued that message in his remarks. It is important, he said, to remember “sometimes life can throw us a curve.” And while many can look to family and friends for help when that happens, others don’t have that assistance.

The mayor said the new facility will give those who have lost hope the opportunity to believe that they can be served in a way that they haven’t seen in years. Gainey pointed out that mental health problems “have exploded over the city,” and said the city didn’t recognize the crisis. “We should have been investing in mental health a long time ago,” he said.

Because state mental health facilities and institutions have closed, the mayor said “it’s in our hands” to find solutions and resources for people suffering from such afflictions.

He thanked Catholic Charities for providing that help among its other new and expanded services, such as high-quality and expanded medical and dental care. With Compassion Corner, Gainey said, Catholic Charities is expanding its reach to tackle challenges head on and help the most vulnerable in the population.

Gainey noted that last year Catholic Charities served over 22,000 people. “People who come here come in distress, but they are not strangers. They are our neighbors. … The truth of the matter is we know coming out of this pandemic, many of our neighbors didn’t come through OK, and neither did our children.”

He alluded to an increase in teenage homelessness in the city and said another important goal is to fix that problem and ensure that they don’t become homeless as adults.

Bishop David Zubik told the audience that he often calls Rauscher “the Mother Teresa of Pittsburgh,” saying, “We all owe Susan a great deal of gratitude for helping this dream come true.”   

The last portion of the project, the Susan Zubik Welcome Center, named for the bishop’s mother, is nearly finished. It will connect the facility with Red Door operations, permitting those who come for meals and services a place to sit out of the elements as well as easy access to Compassion Corner’s services.

He traced the building’s history, explaining that then Diocesan Bishop John Francis Dearden moved operations Downtown to it in 1957 from a smaller space in Oakland to meet parishioners’ needs in its six-county service area. It remained the main location until 2021, when offices and departments moved to its campus on Noblestown Road. Today the diocese ministers to 630,000 Catholics but reaches out to more than a million people with services throughout southwestern Pennsylvania.

Zubik, who blessed the facility and those in attendance, said it was important to recognize the renovated building as a “home of hope for all these people who are not often recognized as our sisters and our brothers.”

Campaign co-chairs, Hoddy Hanna and Susie Shipley, acknowledged the capital campaign’s success to date what those funds have enabled.

Hanna pointed to the expansion of services, including doubling the number of dental chairs and tripling the medical care area’s size, and the Gismondi Training Center. “We can do so much in this building,” he said.

He told the audience that his wife, Mary Ann, called it Catholic Charities’ “moon shot” after the first Compassion Corner meeting. He thanked a number of its major donors and lead fundraisers and said its success is a testament to the staff and their clients.

Hanna said Compassion Corner’s portion of the campaign has reached 91% of its goal, and just 45 minutes prior, the committee had learned of another $50,000 gift. The campaign is set to end at the end of December, and he asked that all work to finish it.

He added the initial drawings and plans for the renovation to the time capsule.

Shipley explained that the combined campaign with Gift of Mary, the temporary emergency shelter nearby that the Red Door ministry oversees, has raised more than $14 million so far, reaching 83% of the goal. She recalled discussing the huge amount of money to be raised with Hanna but said they and others agreed that doing so was important to “improve the lives of so many people, not only here in this corner of the city but in many counties across Western Pennsylvania.”

These efforts are about long-term solutions that are needed because lives are more complex than they were five or 10 years ago, she said, and the solutions and the delivery system for those solutions are more complex, too.

But it’s all attainable, Shipley said, because “The people of this community have grit, and we are not afraid of hard work, and we know how to work together to achieve a common goal.”

She said the location adjacent to the Red Door ministry and its clients will build trust and help them find long-term solutions and emerge from homelessness. That work has begun in earnest she said: The new crisis case management program was at capacity when it launched.

“So we are just getting started with what we can do to really improve the lives of neighbors in our community,” Shipley concluded. She added the campaign’s original case statement to the capsule.

The last speaker, John Gismondi, said it dawned on him when listening to all the remarks that “too many accolades have been thrown our way.” He said the reality is everyone does not have equal opportunities, and “some have been enjoyed greater blessings than others.”

While many attribute those blessings instead to hard work and direction, he said, “Some of us had the [good] fortune to start with a 40-yard lead in a 40-yard dash that our parents and others provided to us. … I recognize that lots of people in this community and on our Earth didn’t get that head start.”

When you have such abundance, Gismondi said you can go in two directions: self-indulgence or extending a hand to others. He’s discussed this with his wife, Lisa, and it drives his philanthropy, just as he knows the latter choice has motivated other supporters.

He thanked major contributors to the training center named for him. The building’s official opening made him think back to the training program’s initial concept and how it has evolved over time. “To see it all come to fruition over as it has in the last year or so has been really, really gratifying,” Gismondi said.

Enrollees in the 10- to 12-week free course learn skills to install, maintain and service telecommunications systems infrastructure. The program has evolved, and now it is expanding into Washington County, Gismondi said. Plus enrollees have experienced a 70% placement rate, “which is pretty good for the market we are in.”

Such success gives the graduates a sense of personal achievement, dignity and security, as well as a job and a pathway forward to a sustaining their families, Gismondi continued.  

“We are so happy to provide that pathway for people in our region,” he said.

And with that, five graduates of the most recent cohort stepped forward to receive their certificates and be recognized for their efforts.