The Lazarus Centre provides an important ministry to people experiencing homelessness.

The Lazarus Centre

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The Lazarus Centre operates onsite at St Peter’s in East Melbourne. The centre provides food, pastoral care and essential support to people experiencing homelessness; it provides people a warm and secure place to eat breakfast seven days a week, every day of the year. The Foundation is the Lazarus Centre’s primary benefactor.

It all began with breakfast

The Lazarus Centre began in the1990s. It started with conversations between people experiencing homelessness, who found refuge in the church grounds, and worshippers at early morning Mass.

After Mass, people would often have breakfast together in the church hall. One worshipper remembered asking one of the homeless people where he slept the night before. He replied ‘The Star Hotel,’ in other words, under the stars. The parishioner offered him a cup of tea. Parishioners began sharing breakfast with people experiencing homelessness and numbers steadily grew over time.

The Lazarus centre grew to take in two sites, one at St Peter’s and another at St Paul’s cathedral. In addition to meals, the Cathedral site and St Mark’s Community Centre offered facilities for showering and washing clothes.

To cope with the growing numbers, St Peter’s entered into a partnership with Anglicare Victoria, St Paul’s Cathedral and St Peter’s Charitable Foundation.

The Cathedral provided drop-in facilities. Anglicare provided the professional personnel, infrastructure and networks needed including connections with health care, housing, and personal support. Due to restricted space and aging facilities management decided to close the site at the Cathedral.

Supporting clients seven days a week

Over thirty years later, the Lazarus Centre programme continues to provide an important ministry to people experiencing homelessness and Melbourne’s most vulnerable communities.

The Lazarus Centre breakfast programme operates seven days a week between the hours of 7:30am and 9:00am. Small food parcels and clothing are also distributed during this time. Breakfast is the first available meal for people after a long night sleeping rough; it is an opportunity to meet with friends, social workers and healthcare professionals.

The Lazarus Centre breakfast programme operates seven days a week between the hours of 7:30am and 9:00am. Small food parcels and clothing are also distributed during this time.

On Fridays at 11:00am, the Lazarus Centre offers a BBQ lunch, in conjunction with Doutta Gala Community Health Services. Clients also have access to legal, housing and health related services.

Since 2013, the Foundation has also supported the programme with its own Chaplain, Fr Philip Gill, who provides intensive to support to Lazarus Centre clients.

Lazarus Centre Staff

Fr Philip Gill: Lazarus Centre Chaplain

Since October 2012 the St Peter’s Charitable Foundation has provided funding for me as chaplain to the Breakfast Programme.

At the Breakfast Programme, staff and volunteers try to create a welcoming and respectful atmosphere. The programme is known for its generosity, hospitality and inclusiveness through which staff gain the confidence of participants, build rapport, and explore pathways for the future, advocating for participants’ health, accommodation and employment.

As chaplain I consider every positive encounter I have with staff, volunteers, and clients a success story. Some of the conversations I have are light-hearted and brief. I remember asking one participant, ‘How are you going today.’ He replied, ‘Good now. I can face the day after a good breakfast!’

Other conversations are heart-breaking as I journey with people whose difficulties have no easy solution. For example, one person came to the Breakfast Programme fortnightly. The week he received his pension was ‘rich week’ and he didn’t need our assistance. But his money was gone by the next week, which he named ‘poor week’. He eventually had been found housing, but I have not seen him since the beginning of COVID-19.

Often my privileged way of thinking is challenged. For example, one person told me that he was kept awake by the rain during the night. I thought to myself, yes rain falling on the roof can keep you awake, but then I realised that he was not talking about rain on the roof – the rain was falling on him.

Chaplaincy carries with it the privilege of assisting people mark important occasions. There are opportunities for private prayer and the blessing of crosses and other sacred objects. Once I celebrated a house blessing at the flat of someone newly housed. Sadly, there have also been memorial services for those who have died while experiencing homelessness. And yet there are many times I celebrate the resilience and courage of those who face some of life’s harshest challenges.

One of the most memorable experiences I have had is spending a lot of time with a man who lived rough and in tenuous housing arrangements for several years. But it had not always been that way for him. He once had a family, a business and several investment properties. Then his business ran into difficulties, his family dissolved, and he had to sell his investments. He is well on the road to recovery now with part-time-work and small business interests. He told of a time he drove past one of the properties he once owned. He said he felt so anxious. The sight of the building reminded him of those times of worry, anger, fear and depression. He said he would never go back to that way of living and he was glad to have left it all behind him. The team at the Breakfast Programme supported him in his journey which lasted some six years.

My experience as Lazarus Centre Breakfast Programme Chaplain has taught me that the solution to homelessness is much more complex than simply putting a roof over someone’s head. The circumstances that lead to homelessness need to be addressed whether economic disadvantage, physical and mental health issues, relationship difficulties and affordability. These issues take time to work through and people need space to integrate the challenges and changes they face.

The Lazarus Centre Programme serves as a place of hospitality and healing of which, I believe, chaplaincy is a crucial part.