Peter McVerry

Peter McVerry
Born	1944 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Ireland
Occupation	Activist
Known for	McVerry Trust

Fr Peter McVerry, SJ (born 1944, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a Roman Catholic priest, notable for battling homelessness in Ireland.^[1] According to one report, the trust which he founded helped 3,600 homeless people in Dublin in 2013.^[2]

Early years

Fr McVerry grew up in Newry, County Down.^[3] where he was educated by the Christian Brothers. He later attended Clongowes Wood College. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1962 and received a BSc from University College Dublin in 1968. He studied philosophy and theology in the Jesuit School of Theology in Milltown Park.

Fighting homelessness

After his ordination as a priest in 1975, McVerry lived and worked in Summerhill, North Dublin. During these years he came face to face with the problem of homelessness and deprivation. He set up a trust to help struggling young people.^[3] He first worked in Ballymun and the North Inner City during the 1970s when he found young homeless people in the streets.^[3] In 1983, he founded a charity to tackle homelessness called The Arrupe Society, but it was subsequently renamed the Peter McVerry Trust, which began as a three-bedroom flat in Ballymun.

We started working with young people and opened a youth club and a craft centre and then I came across a kid sleeping on the street aged nine-years-old ... We decided we better add a hostel to the services we were already running for young people so we opened a small hostel down in the inner city for six boys, as it was all boys then, there were no girls on the streets in the 1970s.

—Fr Peter McVerry^[3]

The trust grew from one flat over the years to include eleven homeless hostels, over 100 apartments, a residential drug detox centre and two drug stabilisation services. In 1979, he opened a hostel for young homeless boys aged between twelve and sixteen. He focused on those deemed too difficult to deal with by other agencies. McVerry recently opened a residential drug detox centre in County Dublin for homeless drug users. McVerry has lived in Ballymun since 1980.

The homeless in Ireland are not a problem, they are simply people who have come upon difficult times and circumstances.

—Fr Peter McVerry^[1]

In 2013, the charity worked with almost 3,600 vulnerable youths. There was controversy in 2014 when a candidate for political office used images of McVerry in campaign leaflets, and McVerry denied that he was endorsing any particular candidate.^[4] He appealed to the government to buy more housing for the homeless.^[5] He advocated greater spending to help reduce inequality.^[6] In 2014, he stated that the crisis of homelessness was threatening middle-class and working-class families.^[7]

Peter McVerry Trust

The Peter McVerry Trust (known previously as The Arrupe Society) was founded in 1983 as a charity to reduce homelessness in Ireland.^[8]

References