Bruce Ritter

Who was Bruce Ritter?

Rev. Bruce Ritter was a Catholic priest and one-time Franciscan friar who founded the charity Covenant House in 1972 for homeless teenagers. By the 1980s, it had grown to an $87 million agency, operating numerous large centers in New York and six other major United States cities, as well as locations in Toronto, Canada and Latin America.

In 1990 Ritter was forced to resign from Covenant House after widespread reports that he had engaged in sexual relations with several youth in the care of the charity, and had financial improprieties in the operations of the organization. It was one of the most widely publicized cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, which was revealed over the next two decades to be widespread. He also left the Franciscans, but retained his priestly faculties. He retired to a small town in upstate New York.