Bruce Ritter (February 25, 1927 – October 7, 1999) was a Catholic priest and one-time Franciscan friar who founded the charity Covenant House in 1972 for homeless teenagers.
By the 1980s, it had grown to an $87 million agency, operating numerous large centers in New York and six other major United States cities, as well as locations in Toronto, Canada, and Latin America.
His father died in 1931 when he was four, and his mother struggled financially during the Great Depression of the 1930s, raising five children on a widow's pension and a series of odd jobs.
Ritter graduated from Hamilton High School West in 1945, worked briefly in a local industry, and joined the United States Navy near the end of World War II.
Although poverty was the main focus of Ritter's teaching, he soon found a more pressing issue, as he had moved into a high crime neighborhood plagued by heavy drug use.
Gradually they accumulated a following of young volunteers who moved to the East Village, Manhattan, and surrounding apartments in an effort to live in community, and to effect social and political change.
Although Fitzgibbon eventually left the ministry, several other individuals, including Adrian Gately, Patricia Kennedy, and Paul Frazier proved instrumental in defining the early years.
The issue of "runaways" was receiving considerable national media attention; Greenwich Village appeared to be a magnet that attracted many homeless youths.
He began to gain considerable publicity by claiming that he was rescuing youths who had arrived in New York City and had been lured into the child pornography and prostitution trades.
[2] By the late 1980s, Covenant House had moved away from the small group home approach and opened large shelters with training programs in seven United States cities, as well as in Canada (e.g. Toronto) and Latin America.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan praised Covenant House in his State of the Union address for their efforts in aiding homeless and runaway youth.
In December 1989, the New York Times reported the father of Kevin Kite said his son was "a chronic liar and thief with a 'personality disorder' and a history of hurting those who try to help him.
They also said a Covenant House contact in upstate New York provided Kite with papers that allowed him to take the identity of Tim Warner, a young boy who died of leukemia in 1980.