CAMBRIDGE -- "The homeless don't get a day off," says Capuchin Brother Paul Fesefeldt.

So why would he?

Brother Paul, of the San Lorenzo Capuchin Friary in Jamaica Plain, is the founder of Capuchin Mobile Ministries, which has provided food and supplies to homeless people throughout Boston and Cambridge since August 2020. In almost six years, Brother Paul can only remember two times when Capuchin Mobile Ministries cancelled its thrice-weekly outreach. The most recent was this January, when a snowstorm blanketed Boston with two feet of snow and shattered the tranquility of years of mild winters.

"People are always out there," Brother Paul said. "It doesn't matter what the weather is."

He's used to hearing from the people he serves that the Capuchins are in the streets when no one else is. He makes sure his supply van, which he calls a "spiritual care vehicle," is out on Sundays, because many service providers are closed that day. Capuchin Mobile Ministries typically provides food and supplies to 130 or 140 people, but those numbers go down in the winter. The van is loaded with sandwiches (volunteers make 15,000 a year for the Capuchins), coffee, hot cocoa (lemonade in the summer), milk, sugar, Splenda, water, rosaries, and cereal bars. In colder months, the van provides hats, gloves, socks, handwarmers, and "street sheets" that direct homeless people to additional help. When it's especially cold, the Capuchins provide blankets.

"It's great to be able to do a ministry in which people that are scapegoated and marginalized by society are reminded that they're children of God and have dignity and worth," Brother Paul said.

The minister of the Province of St. Mary of the Capuchin Order told Brother Paul to start a food truck for those in need in 2019. When Capuchin Mobile Ministries made its first rides, the pandemic made things easier due to the reduced traffic. The van made nine stops when it made its rounds on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Now, it makes seven: Central Square in Cambridge; Harvard Square; the Cambridge Public Library by Cambridge Rindge and Latin School; the Boston Public Library on Boylston Street; the New England Center and Home for Veterans in Downtown Boston; Boston Common; and Nubian Square in Roxbury. Homeless people tend to stick to their neighborhoods and form friendships with each other, a hidden community that exists parallel to, and often ignored by, the city at large.

"There are people that are, like, Back Bay people, and there are Downtown people and there are Cambridge people," Brother Paul said.

He said the City of Boston provides ample resources to people in need of shelter, so deaths from exposure are rare. The most recent was Carvell Curry, who died outside of South Station from freezing temperatures on Dec. 5, 2025. St. Anthony Shrine on Arch Street celebrated his funeral Mass, as it often does for homeless people who have died with no known relatives to claim them. Brother Paul tries to organize memorial vigils for those who have died, especially if they were known among the homeless community.

"It's always a blessing to be able to be with people," he said. "Their struggles are very real, so it's very difficult, but they're just people like you and me."

Capuchin Mobile Ministries is out in the afternoons, after day programs for homeless people are closed, but before most of them seek shelter for the night. In winter, when temperatures plummet and the sun goes down earlier, more homeless people are preparing for the night when the van is making its rounds. Brother Paul has seen some of the same faces regularly since the ministry started. Some tell the Capuchins what has gone wrong in their lives and ask for prayers. Others tell Brother Paul that Capuchin Mobile Ministries cares about them more than anyone else. The point of Capuchin Mobile Ministries is to build relationships with homeless people. For Brother Paul, the hardest part is "carrying their suffering."

"There's no difference just because they're on the street," he said. "They're people just like you and I. They just have different situations in their lives that have led them in a more difficult space, maybe physically, materially, than you or I. That doesn't make any difference."

The stereotype that all homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs has not been his experience.

"You don't define somebody by their illness," he said. "There are a lot of people out there with diabetes or cancer or heart disease, and we don't judge them as being not good enough because of their heart disease. Addictions, that's a medical condition. Mental illness, that's a medical condition."

Not all of the people served by the Capuchins are living on the streets. Some are sleeping on friends' couches or going in and out of temporary shelters. Some have permanent addresses but are in need of food and pastoral care.

"These are community members," he said. "They're like people you go to church with."

When the van stopped in Central Square on Feb. 19, Brother Paul personally greeted every person who came by and asked them how they were doing. Volunteers Dan and Mary Ann Lagan of Natick handed out sandwiches and coffee.

"It opens up a totally different population than we normally see in our everyday," Dan Lagan said.

Mary Ann Lagan said that volunteering allows her to see God in every person she meets.

"It's been eye-opening to be with people," she said. "In fact, we get more out of it than we're actually giving."

The basement of the San Lorenzo Friary was stocked with supplies for the van. Brother Francisco Serrano, who wears blue sunglasses and a Hollister jacket with his habit, was making hot cocoa. A Capuchin for two years, Brother Francisco worked in a soup kitchen but never interacted with homeless people on the street before riding in the van.

"It's more like bonding, because you're going to the places where they're real, versus them coming to a soup kitchen where they have to behave like there's certain protocols," he said. "But on the streets, they just are who they are."

The experience has humbled and strengthened him.

"Even though they're going through so much, they're very prayerful, they're very spiritual, and that's what keeps them going," he said.

Sometimes, people lash out at the friars and volunteers. Brother Francisco said that they're angry at God, and since the Capuchins are God's representatives, they bear the brunt of the abuse. All he can do is listen.

"You don't try to fix them, you don't try to correct them," he said. "Just, 'I'm sorry.'"