Capuchin friars first came to Detroit to work among the poor in 1883. With the arrival of the Great Depression they established a feeding program that was avidly received. Generations later, the Capuchin Soup Kitchen still operates, offering more than 2,000 free nutritious hot meals every day at two sites to anyone desiring to eat. The city’s Capuchins also operate a house that offers substance-abuse treatment to indigent men, a bakery that employs recovering addicts and the formerly incarcerated, a children’s program, an emergency shelter, and services that distribute 30,000 articles of clothing and 300,000 pounds of groceries to poor families every month. The Capuchin Soup Kitchen receives no government funds, relying as it has for 85 years on donations, plus earnings from the bakery.
- History of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, cskdetroit.org/about_us/history