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FORMER PRIEST TO HEAD HOMELESS SHELTER
By Tom Dalton, The Salem News
December, 2005

SALEM — A former Catholic priest and African missionary has been named the first full-time executive director of the Salem Mission, the homeless shelter on Margin Street.

George Delaney, center, the new director of the Salem Mission talks with Carol Caulfield, case manger and Dale Lloyd, a street advocate, in the men's area of the mission.

George Delaney, 61, comes here from New York City, where he was deputy executive director of Coalition for the Homeless, a multi-service agency in lower Manhattan that ran housing, food and job-training programs.

Delaney arrives as the Salem Mission, a 34-bed shelter (52 in winter), embarks on a program to end homelessness, a huge undertaking that will require adding housing programs, job training and other services. He also is taking over as the shelter begins a new life at a new home, having recently moved from its longtime location on Crombie Street to a renovated building at the former St. Mary's Italian Church site.

"George brings exactly the qualities and qualifications we had hoped to find," Andrew Oliver, chairman of the Salem Mission's board, said in a statement. "His compassion is demonstrated not only by his work at (Coalition for the Homeless), but by the 20 years he spent serving the complex needs of a poor population in rural Africa...

"Above all else, George shares our excitement that we are on the verge of dramatically changing the way in which we deal with homelessness here in Salem."

Delaney replaces board member Paul Styczko, who served as interim executive director for the past four months. Styczko was lauded for his contributions during a short, but critical period.
"In simple terms, Paul has changed the culture of the Mission," Oliver said. "The new sense of purpose, the belief among the staff that we will end homelessness in Salem, not simply contain it, are directly attributable to Paul's leadership and dedication."

A Boston native and Boston College High School graduate, Delaney entered the Maryknoll seminary after high school, serving for nearly 20 years as a missionary in Tanzania, a country of 37 million in East Africa. While he might have gone there to bring about change, he says, it was the country that really changed him.

Spirit of Giving

Delaney was impressed by the spirit of "ujamaa" socialism he encountered, where many of those with money and possessions helped the needy and where people worked together on community projects.

Among countless memories, Delaney recalls eating with a family outside their small home in a village and watching in amazement as they shared their dinner with a half-naked, mentally ill man who happened to wander past.

"Those people welcomed him to the table the same way I was welcomed," he said. "The basin of water was brought over to wash his hands, and that food was his as much as it was mine."
Seeing on a daily basis that spirit of community, of treating strangers and the less fortunate as equals, made a deep impression on the young missionary.

"It was a perfect place to find a concrete expression of what we were learning in a classroom or reading in the scriptures. Here were human beings living it every day," he said. "How could that not impact my life?"

After leaving the priesthood in 1992, Delaney worked in New York City on a variety of projects for Coalition for the Homeless, the oldest homeless service organization in the city with a $9.5 million budget and 72 employees.

Before departing, he completed the relocation and renovation of the organization's headquarters. He also oversaw housing and direct service programs.

Delaney left New York to be closer to family in the Boston area. He has a sister in Hingham and relatives in Norwood and Melrose. He and Bridget, his wife of 12 years and a former lay missionary for the Maryknolls, are buying a home on Winthrop Street, a short distance from the shelter.

"I wanted to live where I'm putting my energy," he said.

Delaney said he decided to come here after seeing the job advertised on the Internet and after reading the Salem Mission's vision statement about ending chronic homelessness.
"I believe strongly that nothing in my life has happened by accident, that the same guiding hand that took me to Tanzania is the same guiding hand that has invited me to respond to the situation in Salem."