Father Bill's Place founder remembered as tireless advocate for the homeless

The Rev. McCarthy retired as an active priest in 1995, but the shelter remained his unofficial parish until the end.

QUINCY, Mass. (The Patriot Ledger) -- When visitors came to see him at Father Bill's Place, the Quincy homeless shelter he helped start, the Rev. William McCarthy often pointed outside to the sign with the shelter's name on it.

"I look for the day when we can take that down," he'd say.

The man known to many simply as Father Bill didn't live to see that day. He died Friday morning at a nephew's home on Cape Cod at age 82 after two years of failing health. Even in the last weeks of his life, he was still doing what he could do to reduce the problem of homelessness.

Born to Irish immigrant parents in Haverhill and ordained as a Catholic priest in 1952, the Rev. McCarthy had friends and admirers ranging from shelter guests to the late Thomas Flatley, the billionaire Milton real estate developer who called him "the salt of the earth."

For Massachusetts housing advocate and former Father Bill's Place director Joe Finn of Quincy, the Rev. McCarthy was a man of deep, matter-of-fact faith - "a very generous human being with an intense awareness of the need of people around him."

Nationally known homeless advocate Philip Mangano called the Rev. McCarthy "a modern good Samaritan" who tended to the immediate needs of those on the street and worked to get them into secure housing and a stable life.

"He saw them not as 'the other,' but as his neighbor," said Mangano, director of the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness in President George W. Bush's administration.

As pastor at St. John the Baptist in Quincy and later the face of Father Bill's Place, the Rev. McCarthy was tireless in his efforts to raise attention and money for "those who aren't recognized," as he put it in a 2007 Patriot Ledger interview.

Terse and persistent, he would not hesitate to push wealthy donors like Flatley for additional donations, even after they had handed him checks for $50,000 or $60,000. When he went to city hall to press his case, he usually parked his aging car in the mayor's reserved space. No one objected.

Finn, now a Quincy city councilor, said the Rev. McCarthy was an early advocate for dealing with poverty and housing as the root cause of homelessness, "not as a matter of charity but as a matter of justice."

At the same time, Finn said the Rev. McCarthy never lost sight of the immediate needs of those who came knocking at the church door for help.

Once, at St. John's, another priest on staff discovered that all the mattresses had been removed from the rectory's guest rooms. The Rev. McCarthy had given them to a family that had just found a place to live but had no furniture.

The Rev. McCarthy said he never considered another vocation. A graduate of St. John's Seminary in Brighton, he was assistant pastor in Chelsea and Dorchester before becoming pastor at St. John's in Quincy in 1977.

He opened the emergency shelter that became Father Bill's Place in the winter of 1984 with a few cots in the church basement as overflow beds for the Salvation Army's shelter. He quickly discovered that did not sit well with all his parishioners.

"If you want to be popular, don't start a homeless shelter," he said.

In 1988, the Quincy Interfaith Sheltering Coalition opened a permanent shelter in the ex-Registry of Motor Vehicles building on Broad Street. By that time there was no question about whose name would be on the new shelter.

The Rev. McCarthy retired as an active priest in 1995, but the shelter remained his unofficial parish until the end.

Before injuring his hip in 2007, he made the hour commute
from Cape Cod to the shelter every week. In early July he was soliciting support for the shelter's annual Food Fest fundraiser July 28.

"He was always talking about making that last call," said John Yazwinski, the executive director of Father Bill's & Mainspring.

Lane Lambert may be reached at llambert@ledger.com.

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The Patriot Ledger's editorial and circulation offices are at 400 Crown Colony Drive in Quincy, Massachusetts. This article is used with permission of the Patriot Ledger.