By Erica (Thesing) Kratofil ‘01

My grandfather pulled a book from his shelf, opened it to page 25, and handed it to me. “You should read this story,” he said to me. “It might be exactly what you’re looking for.”

On that afternoon, I was a sophomore at Notre Dame studying journalism and enrolled in a course called American Catholic Prophets. We had studied Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Bernardin, Sister Helen Prejean, and Father Daniel Berrigan. Our next assignment was to find an American Catholic prophet of our own.

I looked down at the book in my hands, Robert Ellsburg’s All Saints. It was opened to an entry about a Catholic photojournalist named Mev Puleo.

Like me, Mev had a comfortable childhood, growing up in a devout Catholic family in the Midwest. She developed an interest in photography at a young age, and went on to publish a book, the Struggle is One. She spoke frequently on issues of poverty and social justice, and her photographs of the poor in Brazil, El Salvador, and Haiti were published widely.

Mev’s passion for giving voice to the poor and suffering had its roots in trip she took to Brazil with her family when she was a teenager. As Mev rode on a tour bus up a steep hill to the statue of Christ the Redeemer, she saw a stark contrast through the bus’s windows: on one side she saw expansive homes, high-end hotels, and carefully groomed beaches. On the other side she saw, as she described in her book, “ramshackle homes, children in rags, young and old begging for our coins.”

That moment filled young Mev with questions about her faith and her calling. As she wrote, “What does it mean to be a Christian—a follower of Jesus—in world of contradictions and conflicts? What does it mean to be on the way to Jesus when I view the world of poverty from the comfort of an air-conditioned tour bus?”

I, too, had wrestled with those questions. Like Mev, I had wondered what it meant to grow up in a community where I had access to so much, while others had so little. My grandfather was right. I had found exactly what I was seeking. I had found an American Catholic prophet of my own in the witness of Mev Puleo.

***

Less than 3 years later, I was in the gym at Saint Louis University (Mev’s alma mater), attempting to entertain a young boy I’d just met while his mother spoke with the attorneys staffing a free legal clinic that afternoon. I was a recent Notre Dame graduate, spending a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer for a legal program serving the homeless community of St. Louis. The boy was telling me about the balloon animal in his hand and the clown he’d met in the children’s area earlier that day.

“When we leave here, we’re going back to the church,” he told me. I nodded, picturing a nearby church-based homeless shelter where they might be staying.

“Are you sleeping at the church tonight?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, studying his balloon animal.

Then he looked up at me, holding my gaze.

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” he asked.

***

I returned to my apartment that evening, sat down at my desk, and filled out an application for a social work graduate program. I had spent months wrestling with my next move, trying to discern where God was calling me after my year of service. I thought of that little boy’s question, and I thought of Mev, who had decided as a teenager vacationing in Brazil to meet Jesus in the poor and the marginalized. Mev had shown me how to step off the bus, and the little boy in the gymnasium of her alma mater had given me the final push I needed.