Broken covenant Book

In 1968, an idealistic young Franciscan priest, burning with desire to make a difference, began a simple street ministry in New York City aimed at helping troubled youth. Through years of struggle, Father Bruce Ritter fought to save young lives from the mean streets. By 1989, he had built a charitable empire - Covenant House - with a committed staff that believed in his mission and a loyal following of hundreds of thousands who funded a network of shelters in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Father Ritter was regarded as a living saint, America's answer to Mother Teresa. But in the fall of 1989, a young journalist began investigating a much darker side of the priest's life. A former male prostitute had come forward with a disturbing allegation - that Father Ritter had lured him into a sexual relationship in exchange for money, a private apartment, and a college scholarship. A criminal investigation of Ritter was launched and the story soon exploded on the front page of the New York Post. Now the prize-winning journalist who first broke that story tells the never-before-revealed details of Father Ritter's fall from grace. Through scores of exclusive interviews with the young street kids Father Ritter is accused of seducing, the disillusioned followers of his mission, and even his own fellow friars, Sennott provides a fascinating, multi-layered portrait of a complicated man of mixed motives and hidden desires. In Broken Covenant we learn how for two decades Church and childcare officials failed to act on complaints of sexual misconduct against Father Ritter that first surfaced at the very beginning of his street ministry; how, with Covenant House on the verge of financial collapse, Ritter made a Faustian bargain with corporate benefactors of the far right that was to compromise both his own vow of poverty and his mission; how Father Ritter's stirring and graphic newsletters of life in the seamy netherworld of America's combat zones - written in langu