22 Facts About Bruce Ritter

Bruce Ritter was a Catholic priest and one-time Franciscan friar who founded the charity Covenant House in 1972 for homeless teenagers.

Bruce Ritter left the Franciscans, but retained his priestly faculties.

Bruce Ritter was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Hamilton Township.

Bruce Ritter's father died in 1931 when he was four, and his mother struggled financially during the Great Depression of the 1930s, raising five children on a widow's pension and a series of odd jobs.

Bruce Ritter graduated from Hamilton High School in 1945, worked briefly in a local industry, and joined the United States Navy near the end of World War II.

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Bruce Ritter transferred for a time to explore monastic life as a Trappist, but returned.

Bruce Ritter completed his doctoral thesis on The Primacy and the Council of Florence at the Conventual seminary in Rome in 1959, but never revised or published it in an academic journal.

In 1968, Bruce Ritter had given a commencement speech at the College attacking American society for becoming grievously disconnected from the teachings of Jesus.

Bruce Ritter had been praised by the students for his speech, but challenged that he ought to practice his preaching.

Bruce Ritter resigned from the college, and began a new ministry on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Bruce Ritter recruited a fellow Franciscan friar, Father James Fitzgibbon, to move to this troubled neighborhood and initiate what he described as a "ministry of availability" to the poor.

The Franciscans lived in a tenement building on East 7th Street, which Bruce Ritter described as a place where he washed his dishes in the bathtub and paid $90 a month in rent.

Bruce Ritter formally incorporated his ministry as Covenant House in 1972 and received his first grant from the New York City Addiction Services Agency to support his work.

Bruce Ritter soon began acquiring other properties and opened a series of boys' and girls' group homes, primarily in the Greenwich Village and East Village neighborhoods.

Bruce Ritter began to gain considerable publicity by claiming that he was rescuing youths who had arrived in New York City and had been lured into the child pornography and prostitution trades.

Bruce Ritter wrote two books, Covenant House: Lifeline to the Street and Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face, which detailed his experience in starting up Covenant House and provided his perspective on homeless teenagers.

In 1985, Bruce Ritter served on US Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography.

In 1988, Bruce Ritter received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.

Bruce Ritter alleged that Ritter diverted up to $25,000 in Covenant House money to finance the affair.

Bruce Ritter denied Kite's story, although he said he helped get Kite a scholarship at Manhattan College.

Bruce Ritter had complained earlier to the Franciscan friary in Union City, New Jersey, after he heard of Kite's charges, and it started an investigation.

Bruce Ritter left the Franciscan order, but retained his priestly faculties by being incardinated into a diocese in India.