The residents of the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter rose at 3 a.m. on Thursday to give everyone time to shower, fix their hair and get dressed in the best clothes they had after years on and off the streets, coping with evictions, abuse and jobs that disappeared.
They were going to have lunch with Pope Francis.
By midmorning, the women were seated at what looked like a wedding reception: a sea of round tables draped in baby blue tablecloths crowned with vases of yellow and orange flowers.
Never mind that the tables were under a tent on a downtown street, and that most of the 300 guests were homeless, felons, mentally ill, victims of domestic violence, substance abusers or combinations thereof. At noon, Francis emerged, as promised.
“He’s a good man. He’s about us,” said Lolita Hilliard, 61, who has lived at the shelter for just over a year.
[For more of this story, written by Laurie Goodstein, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...ype=nyt_now&_r=0]
Comments (0)