MARIANISTS AT WORK
BRO. SKIP MATTHEWS — MINISTRY ON THE STREETS

He writes Christmas cards for street people on Los Angeles' Skid Row and works as a certified hospice counselor. He has delivered more than 100 babies in Africa. Meet Bro. Francis “Skip” Matthews (West Hills, Calif.), whose life has had numerous twists and turns. For most of the 1970s and 80s, Bro. Skip ministered in Zambia, Africa, helping at the Matero Boys Secondary School and working at hospitals, delivering babies and providing general healthcare. In 1992, after a stint in the P.E. department at Junipero Serra High School in Los Angeles, Bro. Skip began his ministry with the street people of Skid Row in LA, serving meals and simply being present. “If I can help one person, then it’s worth sitting there. Every hour I spend on Skid Row is an hour well spent.”

Bro. Skip's experience with his mother and father in hospice care had a profound effect on him. “I had never looked at life as a journey,” he said. “My whole perspective was changed.” The hospice workers encouraged him to enter the field, and after training with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, he became a certified hospice counselor. On a return trip to Zambia in 2003, Bro. Skip offered hospice for AIDS victims and assisted AIDS orphans.

Not only does he offer hospice care to those in the ghetto, his annual Christmas card program sends more than 2,000 cards to the friends and family of Skid Row residents. “Everybody on Skid Row has somebody, somewhere. Their relatives want to know if they’re alive or dead.” In a few cases, a Christmas card has renewed contact between family members. Bro. Skip also regularly collects books to send to the Matero Boys School and children’s clothes for AIDS orphans in Zambia.

He joined the Marianists because of the brothers and priests he met at Serra High School, his alma mater, including Bros. Elmer Dunsky and Joe Wasy and Frs. Jorge da Silva and John Bolin. “They cared about us and took care of us,” he said. “They were very service oriented.”