The Servants with a Smile for the Poor
With all everything that I have written here about Pope John Paul I, I just realized that I have made a major omission. I really haven’t said anything about the Missionary Servants of John Paul I, an organization started in 1978, right after the death of the Pope, by Ray and Lauretta Seabeck of Gilford New Hampshire.
This couple dedicate their lives to helping the poor in the Third World in imitation of Pope John Paul I, the child of a poor family who made the Third World and the missions one of his biggest concerns of his own ministry. They gather food, clothing, religious objects and everything that the poor need, and ship it in sea containers to Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Haiti. They also publish Humilitas, the English edition of the magazine started in Italy about the Smiling Pope.
The best way to tell their story is to re-publish here one of my articles that I’m proudest of, called “Ray, Lauretta and the Smiling Pope,” from the July 1991 Catholic Digest. Their lives are so inspiring!
For more information about their work or to subscribe to Humilitas, write to:
Ray and Lauretta Seabeck
The Missionary Servants of John Paul I
22 Boyd Hill Rd.
Gilford, NH 03249
