"Pops"

Back in the mid 1980's Father Emmett Johns was the pastor at the church I attended every Sunday with the rest of my family. Then suddenly one day during his homily he announced that he was leaving parish ministry to tend to the disenfranchised of Montreal. He had already asked permission of the bishop who had wholeheartedly offered his blessings.

Using an old travel caravan, he formed "Dans la Rue" and with committed helpers would serve hot meals to drug addicts, the homeless and LGBTQ youth who were living on the street; this until well into the night. During a time when it was even more deeply dangerous to be who you were, he was ministering to people that society forgot and became affectionately known to them as "Pops" because he had become a father figure.

This is the true message of Chrstianity where instead of judging we open our hearts to those who have been rejected simply for not being able to fit in. This type of conviction could not have been easy as he was well into his fifties at the time, and yet Father Johns recognized that his calling needed to mean something more than preaching to comfortable middle class Catholics.

By the time of his death in 2018 at the age of 90, he had become a household name in Montreal and all the more so for the people who needed him the most.