Baltimore priest heads to the Vatican with a message on working with the homeless

To the Rev. Brendan Fitzgerald, it seems that both religious and lay efforts to support homeless people can neglect a “hidden suffering” – a lack of connection to others.

That vital but often forgotten need — what Fitzgerald calls “relational ministry” — is the message he and 19 other Catholic leaders from across the United States hope to take to Pope Leo XIV, as they head to Rome this weekend as the Vatican gears up for the 10th World Day of the Poor on Sunday.

“Social services are just as important and vital. We need to try to provide housing and food and shelter and job training and drug rehabilitation,” Fitzgerald said Friday ahead of his eight-hour flight to Italy. “But the human relationship can get lost, and that’s the gift we’re trying to give.”

Those comments came ahead of Friday’s nationwide ground stop ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration due to a communication issue at regional air traffic control centers — which Fitzgerald avoided because his was leaving Newark, New Jersey, and headed across the ocean.

Once in Rome, he hopes to promote the work at Baltimore-based mission to help homeless individuals form connections and feel less alone.

Fitzgerald, the rector at the Basilica of the Assumption in downtown Baltimore, is also executive director of Source of All Hope. Twice a week, missionaries in the program walk the streets of Baltimore and meet with the homeless individuals they run into.

While they come with bottles of water and socks for those without, their goal is to simply talk to and make friends with the people struggling with homelessness, who Fitzgerald refers to as “our friends on the street.”

Whether it’s talking about the challenges they face day-to-day or just chatting about the Baltimore Orioles, Fitzgerald says that conversations with homeless people are “not too different” from conversations with anyone else. But building those connections not only helps the homeless individual feel less alone, it’s fulfilling for the Fitzgerald and the 11 missionaries who participate.

“I really don’t start those conversations off too differently from how I would talk to any parishioner or a visitor to our basilica,” he said. “Usually I start with, ‘Where are you from? Are you from Baltimore? What part of Baltimore? How long have you been around?’

“You come to understand that there’s something in common between the two of you that runs deeper – shared life histories, shared values, shared experiences,” he said, “What we offer is friendship, real relationships.”

Homelessness has been an ongoing challenge in Baltimore, and Catholic organizations often lead housing initiatives, job opportunities and meal assistance to help some of the roughly 1,600 people experiencing homelessness on a given night, according to the most recent “Point-in-Time Count” of the number of homeless people on a single January night.

But efforts specifically to connect with homeless individuals on a personal and social level are less common, which is why Source of All Hope began in 2019 to develop relationships with those experiencing homelessness.

“I always thought of poverty as a problem to be solved – and it is, we don’t want anyone to be poor – but there’s people there. People you can talk to … people you can care for through relationships,” Fitzgerald said.

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The trip to the Vatican is part of a collaboration with nine similar programs in other states, called Authentic Response, to promote the importance of human connection in supporting the homeless population. Each of the 10 organizations is sending two representatives.

The director of mission for Source of All Hope, Emma Zanotelli, is traveling with Fitzgerald to Rome for World Day for the Poor on Sunday. The following week, Catholic churches and organizations around the world will offer additional aid to those in need, including food drives, medical assistance and other charitable work.

Fitzgerald said that the organizations with Authentic Response will participate in a general audience with the pope on Wednesday, fresh off his return to Rome after a tour of South America.

“We’ll see the Holy Father, we’ll introduce ourselves and tell him a little bit about some of the work we’re doing,” he said. “We’ll also be over there to pray and learn and we’ll see what good can come from it.”

Fitzgerald said he hopes to thank the pope for his first exhortation, a letter to the church issued in October 2025 that focused on the church’s relationship to those living in poverty.

“It was a letter on the reality of poverty, encouraging the church to care for and love the poor, and challenge the church to think differently about poverty,” Fitzgerald said.

“If I just get the moment to shake the Holy Father’s hand, I want to tell him thank you for that letter – let him know that it changed my heart and my mind,” he said. “That I’m grateful for it and that here in our little corner of Baltimore, we’re doing what we can to support the mission.”