Henry Shelton, a Roman Catholic priest turned social justice and political activist, longtime voice in Rhode Island for those who had none, passionate advocate for the poor and dispossessed and thorn in the side of the state’s business and political establishment, died Wednesday at home in Cranston surrounded by his family. He was 86.
A son of Central Falls, Shelton was a lifelong fighter for those in need. He was a familiar figure on the front lines of social and political issues, standing up for those who had little and had their heat and electricity shut off on a chilly winter’s night for lack of enough money to pay a utility bill. Or the child who went to school on an empty stomach. Or the homeless who lacked shelter from the elements.
A community activist, Shelton was a familiar figure in Rhode Island for generations, standing up for labor unions, for the unemployed and the down-and-out. A peace and justice activist, Shelton was relentless in his fight for those left behind in a society suffused by racial discrimination and income inequality.
“He taught so many how to stand up for themselves and created a whole community of advocates,’’ said Stephen Graham, a close friend and fellow activist.
He cut a distinctive figure. With his hole-filled wool sweaters, ill-fitting toupee and hand-scrawled news releases, he was an unusual activist, a throw-back in an Internet age to a generation of protestors straight from Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker movement. Shelton’s moral and political views were limned by Day, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus Christ.
Many community organizers evolve into politics or to working for stable non-profit agencies. Not Shelton. He never sought glory or ran for political office. He never saw himself as a pied piper for the poor. Brian Jones, a retired Providence Journal reporter who covered Shelton for years, says that Shelton truly believed in empowering the poor so they could help themselves.
“It really was never about Henry,’’ recalled Jones in a recent interview.
Shelton was born at the height of the Depression in 1930 in Central Falls, the son of a Blackstone Valley textile worker. The family lived in a tenement and Shelton worked from an early age, including stocking shelves in a grocery store where a delicacy was horsemeat.
After graduating from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket, he went into the priesthood, following two of his uncles who were priests. He got out of the seminary in 1957 and was assigned as an assistant pastor at St. Jude’s parish in Lincoln. His activism, Jones said, found an unlikely ally in Rev. Russell J. McVinney, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence. While McVinney was a conservative, he supported Shelton’s idea of establishing an inner-city apostolate and assigned Shelton to oversee it from St. Michael’s Church in South Providence.
Shelton urged the young boys in the hardscrabble neighborhood to gets jobs such as selling newspapers rather than turn to drugs. Years later he tried to organize a union of news boys and girls who delivered the Providence Journal-Bulletin. He was upset that the union representing Journal workers, the Providence Newspaper Guild, didn’t support this drive. “He could be a pain in the butt,’’ recalls Jones.
Years later, in 1997, he received the Guild’s John Kiffney award, which is given to a Rhode Islander who, among other attributes, lives a life “whose caring, courage and humor light the way for those who follow.’’
Shelton spent 15 years in the priesthood, leaving in 1973 to marry Carol Regan, a nun who had also been in a religious order for 15 years. The couple raised five children and settled in Cranston’s Edgewood neighborhood. Leaving the church was painful for both, who always hoped the church would permit nuns and priests to marry.
“Leaving the church was not easy for them,’’ said Jones. Despite leaving the priesthood, Shelton remained a Sermon On The Mount Christian until the day he died. He kept in touch with parishioners from St. Michael’s and though wheelchair-bound, two years ago attended a post-Mass brunch for the parish at the home of his friends Ann Sliney and George Nee, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and a longtime Shelton friend and ally.
Shelton left vivid impressions on those he touched. Jack McConnell, now a U.S. District Court judge, recalls meeting Shelton was he was five or six years old, when his mother took him to a Statehouse rally Shelton organized to support a clothing allowance for women on welfare. When McConnell was a student in the late 1970s at Brown University, he interned with Shelton at the Catholic Inner City Center on Prairie Avenue in Providence’s impoverished south side.
“Henry was the collective conscience of our community,’’ said McConnell. “He always reminded us of the needs of the poor, the underrepresented and the forgotten. He spoke the truth to power on their behalf.
“He was motivated by an extremely deep religious calling,’’ recalled McConnell. “He would always answer the question `What would Jesus do?’ by saying that `Jesus would be on the side of the poor.’
Bob Kerr, the longtime Journal columnist and a contributor to Rhode Island Public Radio, said that in his more than 40 years in journalism in the Ocean State, “there is no one I have respected more in the fight for social justice.’’
“He brought the poor into the conversation, forced us to consider what it means every day not to have enough. I have never called anyone a pain in the ass with greater respect and affection. He was true to the cause and a regular thorn in the side of those who would do business without considering the consequences.’’
He wasn’t a humorless zealot. He was funny and enjoyed a spirited softball game. Shelton was also a devoted Boston Red Sox fan and loved baseball.
Tributes to Shelton poured in today. He was a founder of the George Wiley Center in Pawtucket, which was named after Wiley, a Rhode Islander who started the National Welfare Rights Organization. “Helping others was the core of Henry Shelton’s life and work,’’ said U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin.
Said R.I. Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, “He worked with love and humility in a relentless quest to secure better services for low-income families.’’
Atty. Gen. Peter Kilmartin said, “Although Henry left the priesthood, he continued to walk in the path of God in how he treated others. No one who came to the Wiley Center for help was turned away.’’
“Henry Shelton put the word active into activism,’’ said U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. “He was caring, courageous and passionate about helping working families and those who were less fortunate.’’
A wake for Shelton will be held this Sunday at Keefe Funeral Home in Lincoln. A Funeral mass will be Monday at 10am at St. Jude’s church in Lincoln.