Episcopal Bishop Spends Month on the Streets

Calling herself “Aly,” Episcopal Church Bishop Geralyn Wolf spent January on the streets, befriending the homeless and sleeping and eating in shelters.

Her goals: To learn firsthand what it is like to scrape by, to temporarily trade administration for hands-on ministry and to put her pulpit words into action.

The experiment was praised by Rhode Island clergy and Episcopal bishops elsewhere.

Now off the streets, she is still trying to understand and find solutions to the plight of the poor.

“I have this power as the bishop of the diocese, but so often I’m bound up in pettiness,” she told the Providence Journal.

“People are fascinated by someone in that position doing something like this ... but they are also really trying to figure out how they feel about it,” said Noreen Shawcross, director of Rhode Island’s Coalition for the Homeless.

In 1996, Wolf, who was raised Jewish, became the second woman to head a U.S. Episcopal diocese.