Institute for Nonviolence opens new doors in South Providence

  
 
Sunday October 17 in the Providence Journal

By Philip Marcelo

PROVIDENCE — Ten years ago, the Rev. Raymond Malm and Sister Ann Keefe walked out of another memorial service for another slain teen in their South Providence parish of St. Michael the Archangel and vowed to make a change.

It was late June, and the city was in the midst of a violent summer in which more than five youths would be murdered. Among those was 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, who was shot in front of her house the day before she was to testify in a murder trial.

“I remember feeling like, ‘What a waste of life.’ I was so mad at our young people,” says Father Malm, now at St. Joseph Church in Newport. “I’d tell them, ‘You’re going to get your revenge, and we’re going to be back here in two weeks for another funeral.’ ”

As Father Malm and Sister Keefe recall, they stood at the steps of St. Michael and took in a broad view of the neighborhood — the parking lots, the scrubby fields and the low-slung apartment complexes off Prairie Avenue.

Their eyes fell on the church’s convent, which had closed in the 1970s.