St. Patrick’s Center Casserole Program

Information and history about the program

In the early 1980’s Edith Cunnane, a social worker advocate and visionary recognized the need to assist the vulnerable people on the streets of downtown St. Louis.  In partnership with Monsignor Robert Slattery, Catholic Charities and the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the St. Patrick Center was established in1983. The first location was inside the former St. Patrick School at 6th and Biddle.  (Current location is 800 N. Tucker).  Providing a hot meal for the homeless was a top priority.  The casserole program was soon begun under the guidance of Edith Cunnane who assigned a recipe to each day of the week.  Each of the 31+ recipes have a meat, starch and sometimes a veggie.  The Center currently serves a mid-day meal to 150-200 people, seven days a week.

Current Program at SJA

St. Joan of Arc Parish has participated in this meal program for many years.  The recipe assigned to our parish is a ground beef, rice, veggie meal.  The St. Patrick Center provides the tins and asks that the casseroles be delivered frozen to the Center on the first Monday of the month (including holidays).  Upon delivery an attendant counts and identifies the donation coming from SJA.
Thanks to the generosity of our parishioners, an average of 40-50 casseroles are delivered each month.

THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE IN THE DROP OFF SCHEDULE!

The PREFERRED drop off date for your fully frozen casserole is on the first Monday
of the month before 10:00 am. If this is an inconvenient time, you may drop off a casserole at the rectory office during office hours between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm, Monday thru Thursday.
Casserole tins (and the recipe) will still be available the third weekend of the month in the church front vestibule, rectory back porch or rectory office. 

Message we recently received from
the St. Patrick Center.

 “To say we appreciate our casserole volunteers would be an understatement.  Throughout the pandemic when citizens were told to stay home, more than 85 casserole teams continued to prepare and drop off casseroles for our clients who do not have a home.  Since March, not one volunteer missed a delivery, they even managed to get the casseroles to us during a two week period (in the spring) when we were shuttered to everyone but clients and minimal staff due to virus exposure.  This cornerstone program is 36 years strong.  Thank you to all of our casserole volunteers!”