The young priest, always something of a misfit, chose an unconventional spot to start his preschool: a former pigsty near a slaughterhouse in one of Bangkok’s poorest neighbourhoods.
For a fee of a penny or two a day, the Rev Joseph Maier took in children from the most destitute families, teaching them to spell their names in Thai and feeding them what was often their only meal of the day.
He also lived nearby, his neighbours the castoffs in the capital: butchers, scavengers, street vendors, professional beggars, thieves and prostitutes. Wooden planks formed walkways over the muddy ground, which turned into polluted swamps during the rainy season.
Fifty years later, Father Joe, as the American Roman Catholic priest came to be known by his neighbours, is still there, ministering to the residents of what remains one of poorest neighbourhoods in what is now a modern metropolis.
He initially came to Klong Toey as a sort of exile, he said, shunned by the church because of his boorish behaviour.
“Nobody wanted me around,” he said in a recent interview. “I was drunk; I was always angry about something, an angry young man. I didn’t fit in.”
But in Klong Toey, Father Joe, now 82, found his place in the world, an outcast among outcasts.
That tiny, threadbare preschool was only the beginning of a life’s work as a socially engaged priest, as interested in people’s material well-being as in their spiritual growth.
In the years that followed, he started the Human Development Foundation and its related Mercy Centre. The foundation has grown to include a network of more than 30 schools that have taught more than 30,000 children, a home for abandoned mothers and children, and an Aids hospice that evolved into a home-care system. He also became a regular contributor to the Bangkok Post, where he movingly described the lives of the people in his community.
“For me, he is more than Father Joe,” said Nitaya Pakkeyaka, 52, who was one of the first children to attend his preschool and now works as a member of his staff.
“I can say he is my everything. He is my dad. He is my grandpa,” Nitaya added. “Every time I have a problem, it’s always him to hold my hand. He is always on my side, whether good or bad, sad or happy.”
But even now, Father Joe said, after gaining international recognition; a master’s degree in human settlements; two honorary doctorates; honorary citizenship of Bangkok; and a lifetime achievement award presented by Her Majesty Queen Sirikit the Queen Mother, he still has not shaken off his feeling of not belonging.
“I’ve always been an outsider, always on the margins,” he said. “I’ve always been, as the Irish say, ‘walking on the edges of the tin’” — on the periphery of society, as he explained it. (Story continues below)
Students take their afternoon nap at the Mercy Centre kindergarten in Klong Toey. (Lauren DeCicca/The New York Times)
Born in the small town of Longview in the western US state of Washington on Oct 31, 1939, young Joe Maier was abandoned by his father, a house painter and farmer, whom his mother repeatedly took to court in fruitless attempts to gain child support.
“He wasn’t abusive; he just left us, and it hurts so badly,” he said. “That’s the essence of it all: I wanted to become a priest to help other kids so they wouldn’t suffer and hurt like I did.”
While still a boy, he left home to join Roman Catholic Redemptorist seminaries in Oakland, California, and in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
After ordination, he recalled the thrill of preaching his first sermon in a tiny wooden church in South Dakota that had been built by his Irish relatives and seated just 40 people.
“That’s a very important moment for a priest,” he said, pointing to a small framed black-and-white photograph of the church hanging on a wall above his dining table.
When he arrived in Thailand in 1967, on his assigned mission by the Redemptorists, he was first dispatched to the far northeastern part of the country and to Laos. Returning to Bangkok in 1971, after war came to Laos, he was reassigned to Klong Toey, almost as far out of sight as if he had been in the distant highlands.
“The priest there was drunk,” he said, “and I replaced him there, as a drunk and a priest.”
In Klong Toey, he met a Catholic nun, Sister Maria Chantavarodom, now 92, who led him through the narrow lanes and joined him in founding the tiny school in a former pigsty.
“Sister Maria was always the heartbeat, always the holiness,” he said. “It was always her, and it’s still her,” Father Joe said, perhaps embracing the humility that befits a priest. “It’s never been me. I just stumble along.”
Soon after he arrived there, he had an opportunity to escort Mother Teresa around Klong Toey during her visit to Thailand. He was so taken with her charisma and saintliness that he says he remembered exclaiming, “I want to be like this. Wow!”
Following her example, he said that for 23 years he visited the inmates at a maximum-security prison and an immigration jail. During Holy Week leading up to the Catholic celebration of Easter, he carried out a ritual of washing prisoners’ feet.
For decades, Father Joe lived in a shack, like his neighbours. In 2001, an American philanthropist, John Cook, donated money to build a compound for the Mercy Center that includes dormitories, classrooms, a chapel and a comfortable apartment for the priest.
For all his good works, Father Joe can be demanding and abrupt, according to the centre’s staff, and five decades after his arrival in Thailand, his relations with the church hierarchy remain strained.
“The church wants nothing to do with me, and the cardinal kind of ignores me, which is fine,” he said, apparently referring to Cardinal Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanit, the archbishop of Bangkok. “Jesus was never accepted for doing good; they killed him.”
The new pastor of the local Redemptorist mission, the Rev John Wirach Amonpattana, said that it was only the higher levels of the church that are still wary of Father Joe, who celebrates Mass at his Holy Redeemer church every weekend.
“He is like a prophet with his work,” Father Wirach said.
Catholics are a tiny minority in Klong Toey, and in Thailand overall, but Father Joe said he has always embraced the Buddhists and Muslims he lives among and that the respect is mutual.
“We are in total unity with the Buddhists and Muslims,” he said. “We pray together.”
The religious differences are “no big deal”, he added. “They accept me as one of them. I’m treated like a monk, behaving with politeness, kindness; don’t get angry, don’t show off.”
Caring for the welfare of his flock has always been his top priority, he said. Converting people to Christianity was never on his agenda.
Every Saturday, Father Joe offers Mass for the children of the centre, and they are free to pray in whatever religion they choose. “But in the midst of the Buddhist prayers,” he said, “we make sure to slip in a ‘Hail Mary’.”
As with Catholic priests, Buddhist monks in Thailand are not expected to be vegetarians, but Father Joe still gave it a shot. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I ate a lot of chicken noodle soup and instant noodles on the side.”
But as a religious figure in Klong Toey, he was motivated, he said, “to be pure as snow”, adding, “I couldn’t do anything stupid, like getting drunk.”
At the beginning, it was hard to be pure.
“I was a hypocrite,” he said. “I drank privately.”
When he had a younger man’s legs, he wandered Klong Toey’s passageways and food stalls.
When he does get out now, people still greet him, “Hello, Father Joe!” as if they were Catholics themselves.
“He’d walk along and talk to everybody, even though his Thai wasn’t that good: ‘How are you doing today? Are you selling well?’” said Amphorn Iamphorn, 58, who has been selling grilled toast with butter and sugar in the neighbourhood for 23 years. “For me, it has nothing to do with religion; he’s just a good man.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Father Joe Maier visits a kindergarten class at the community centre he founded in Klong Toey. (Lauren DeCicca/The New York Times)