BRISTOL, Va. – Greg Barrett found Father Joe.
And then, well, he just wouldn’t let go.
The story of Father Joe Maier so captivated Barrett, a longtime journalist, that he knew he couldn’t just write about this priest in Bangkok for a newspaper.
This man’s story, as Barrett saw it, proved to be the makings of a book, “The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok” (Jossey-Bass, $25.95).
“Everyone said you need to find this guy named Father Joe,” Barrett said. “He lived right smack-dab in the middle of the slums.”
In fact, Maier’s home stood on stilts, above raw sewage, when Barrett met him in Bangkok a few years ago.
“The Gospel of Father Joe” reveals how the man Barrett called “the Father Teresa of Bangkok” has persevered against all kinds of odds and obstacles to gradually expand the Mercy Centre, an establishment that Maier uses to declare war on poverty – using only pencil, paper and common sense, Barrett said.
That war included building preschools illegally – without the permission of church superiors or Thai authorities.
And, yet, when police threatened to shut down construction, Father Joe would shrug and say go ahead. “But you’ll have to explain it to them,” Father Joe would say, pointing to children, “and to them,” he would add, pointing to their mothers.
The people and this priest gradually built an oasis among these slums – an oasis that includes schools, AIDS hospices, orphanages, safe houses, medical clinics and sports leagues.
“Father Joe is different, certainly,” Barrett said. “He doesn’t bite his tongue for anyone. He can speak out pretty honestly about the Vatican.”
Barrett, the author, is a Bristol native. He graduated Virginia High School in 1980. Now married, with two children, and living at Alexandria, Va., on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., Barrett makes his living writing for a variety of publications.
He’s worked for USA Today and The Baltimore Sun.
Just after graduating at Virginia High, he worked in a factory at Burlington Industries then attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Following a job as a lifeguard in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Barrett worked for a variety of newspapers in South Carolina and Virginia. He was also once the Native Hawaiian Affairs reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser.
Still, in all his years, through thousands of articles, Barrett knew he had found an unforgettable character in the passion of the man known commonly as Father Joe.
“There was a lot more to him that what I could write on the wire,” said Barrett, 46.
For the book, Barrett said he felt like he was writing a “modern day gospel.”
He also figured he had found a prophet in Father Joe.
Yet, Barrett said, “The real genuine prophets of this world, who are keeping things in balance, are too busy to talk about themselves.”
So that, in turn, meant Barrett had to keep going back to Bangkok to not only get to know Father Joe but to live his kind of life – on a daily basis – and experience what it was like to help others in the midst of pure poverty.
“This is a spiritual book,” Barrett said. “And it’s a religious book. And it’s a current affairs book. It’s a biography ... And it’s a story I believe in.”
jtennis@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0704
THE BOOK SIGNING for Sunday, April 20, at Books-A-Million, Bristol Virginia, has been cancelled. Barrett will sign books at Zazzy'z in Abingdon on May 24 at 2 p.m.
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