Father Joe, priest of the Bangkok poor, thrives among other outcasts


Born in Longview, Washington on October 31, 1939, he was abandoned by his father, a house painter and farmer, whom his mother repeatedly sued in unsuccessful attempts to obtain child support.

“He wasn’t abusive; he just left us and it hurts so much,” he said. “That’s the essence of it all: I wanted to become a priest to help other children so that they don’t suffer and suffer like me.”

While still a boy, he left home to attend Redemptorist Catholic seminaries in Oakland, California, and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

After the ordination, he recalled the thrill of preaching his first sermon in a small wooden church in South Dakota that had been built by his Irish parents and could seat only 40 people.

“It’s a very important moment for a priest,” he said, pointing to a small framed black-and-white photograph of the church hanging on the wall above his dining table.

When he arrived in Thailand in 1967, on a mission assigned by the Redemptorists, he was first sent to the far northeast of the country and to Laos. Returning to Bangkok in 1971, after the arrival of war in Laos, he was reassigned to Klong Toey, almost as far away as if he had been in the remote highlands.

“The priest there was drunk,” he said, “and I replaced him there, as a drunkard 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 little school in a former pigsty.