For 31 years now, Lucio Abbruzzese and the St. Patrick’s Summer Street Patrol have walked the same downtown paths every Wednesday evening to hand out food and offer a few minutes of conversation to the city’s most vulnerable. That very simple, humble mission he started in 1995 has remained unchanged, no matter how greatly the city around it has refused to.

Officially beginning its first deliveries as a three-decade plus institution on July 8, Abbruzzese can only think about how the time has flown by. He was 27 when he first began volunteering to hand out sandwiches to Toronto’s homeless community — in a few weeks, he will extend the same offering as he turns 58. 

“All I know is that today stands as a completely different world, and I have this feeling of, ‘How did I get here?’ ” he said when asked how the remarkable milestone initially hit his ear. 

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“It can be hard to believe, and what I often think about is the baseball player Lou Gehrig, The Iron Horse, who was known for just refusing to stop doing his job day in and day out. It’s the same with me. I just keep doing it because I love it, and those years add up."  

The blessing of a stable life, to remain stationary across his teaching career and personal commitments, is a grace to Abbruzzese. In summers where others find themselves on vacation away from the city’s bustling streets, he chooses to remain.

“I have pretty much been here every Wednesday for 31 years.”  

Even as Toronto’s landscape has changed drastically, largely for the worse in terms of homelessness, food insecurity and inflation, the Summer Street Patrol has constantly led the way in simple, unchanged support. Volunteers, often featuring anywhere from 20 to 40 youth and adults, prepare food ahead of each meeting at St. Patrick’s Parish on McCaul Street before walking downtown routes to offer those in need sustenance and friendship.

Abbruzzese said the increase in homeless people at Toronto City Hall in the heart of Nathan Phillips Square has made it so crowded that, last year, the team often couldn’t move beyond the location as its first stop due to all the food having been distributed. Surrounding shelters and park areas continue to see volume that is exorbitant, unlike the relative scarcity of when he started his mission. 

“ The program hasn't changed. It's everything else that's changing around us. We do a very simple thing, but that’s the strength of our mission. If it was too burdensome, this would've closed down years ago,” he said. 

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Still, the reality of a program like the Summer Street Patrol as a necessity rather than an optional offering provides Abbruzzese and the St. Patrick’s team with mixed emotions. The sobering, frustrating reality of the need, not only persisting but growing, is still felt deeply behind the celebration of 30+ years of service 

“ I always recall the words of Jesus, who said, 'The poor will always be with us.’  That's just the way the world works.  There was a time when the switch flipped, and I thought, ‘This is never going to change,’ ” he said. 

That acceptance has not lessened the mission by any measurable means; the opposite, in fact. Abbruzzese took a moment of reflection to think about those he first encountered on Toronto’s streets more than 30 years ago. 

“ People that we've helped will disappear after a few years, and you always wonder about them — I still do today. Sometimes you hear good stories about someone finding a place and getting clean, or you hear someone found them in the morning after passing away,” he revealed. 

“The people you help hopefully benefit from our services, and I think, even at their time of death, they are closer to God because of what we can do. That’s at least what we hope — that through Street Patrol we make everyone feel like they're a part of God's family and that no one's left behind.” 

It is that goal that stands as one of many that Summer Street Patrol continues to show up each year, backed by a beautiful synergy that sees the homeless and volunteers transformed by its very nature. Although still very much in the thick of planning and delivering himself, Abbruzzese shared the joy he gets today from seeing young volunteers light up just as he did when he started at their age in 1995, even as it becomes more challenging to do so. 

“ Let's face it, for the volunteers, this is getting harder economically. People are stressed about having the money to make the sandwiches, the time to come to downtown Toronto. It's not as easy as it was 30 years ago,” he said. “They still have these glowing faces, and I think that’s the Holy Spirit  being a witness to this love that we can give and receive in the hardest of situations.” 

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Summer Street Patrol will venture out every Wednesday evening in July and August. When asked if he had any plans of stopping, the once-tentative kid, now wiser but with the same resolve, still has an end of a bargain to uphold. 

“ I made a deal with God a long time ago where I said, ‘As long as I'm alive and in Toronto, I will be there.’ I do wonder sometimes what (the next few years) will look like, but we will just leave it in God's hands — I can only do what I can do,” Abbruzzese said.