Bordering the Superdome and the skyscrapers, hotels, and office buildings that form the financial and retail district of New Orleans is one of the worst slums in the city. Bankers label this area not merely low income, but highly distressed low income. Drug dealers and prostitutes who conduct their business from corner pay phones control the streets. If those who run their illicit businesses don’t want you in the neighborhood, they simply burn down your building.

Father Harry Thompson, S.J., decided to do something about the situation. Father Thompson, who died in 2001, had been president of a large ­Jesuit high school and wanted to devote the last years of his life to significant ministries in the inner city.

He joined a group of like-minded souls, who had no trouble finding evidence that a multitude of young lives, smothered by poverty and want, were spiraling into destructive behaviors. The group set out to establish a safe and supportive place where at-risk youth would have an opportunity to learn the skills necessary to become productive individuals.

Craig Cuccia, cofounder and director of capital projects for Café Reconcile, was one of the members of this group who shared Father Thompson’s vision for helping the poor. Cuccia’s first step was to befriend the people who lived in the section of the inner city where he and Father Thompson felt God was calling them to serve. A man dressed in a distinctive white tuxedo and red tie came to the neighborhood every day to sell coffee and doughnuts. Cuccia struck up a friendship with the coffee entrepreneur, and they began selling snow cones to kids who came, seemingly out of nowhere, to buy them. These children, although usually invisible, increased the group’s understanding of who actually lived in the neighborhood. Father Thompson’s group eventually purchased a building and started Kids Café, a place where young people and others in the neighborhood could enjoy a normal Saturday-night dining experience.

The planning group, however, wanted to provide more than a soup kitchen. They envisioned a program that would give young people the skills needed to find and keep jobs. This vision—to have a place where young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two could gain the skills and self-discipline necessary for employment—led to the opening of Café Reconcile in 2000. Well-trained food-service workers are always in demand in New Orleans, where tourism is a main source of income.


Café Reconcile trains about ninety young people a year, offering nine-week cycles of classes in every facet of the restaurant business. Abandoned by their parents, the kids who come to Reconcile are the most vulnerable in society. They wander the streets begging, stealing, and becoming victims of abuse. Some learn about Reconcile through residential drug programs, others through word of mouth. A friend might tell them, “Your life is a mess. You’re selling drugs on the corner and you really need help.