A ministry of St. Patrick Catholic Church
The St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry at St. Patrick is managed and operated by volunteers. Food pick-up is located at the south entrance of our parish center off of Main St. in Urbana.
Would you like to be a guest at our pantry?
Come to the parish for assistance on Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 5 p.m.
Food is distributed at the south entrance of the parish center off of Main St. in Urbana.
Please bring a photo ID to show that you live in Champaign County. Guests may visit once per week. During COVID, masks are required to be worn over the mouth and nose.
How does it work?
On weekday afternoons (Tuesday and Thursday from 4:00-5:00p.m.) members give out food to our Friends who come to the parish center. Lots of "behind-the-scene" work is done by SVDP members making it possible for the other members to distribute food on those afternoons.
How do we do it?
The Food pantry is a completely volunteer effort. Volunteers unload, sort, and stock the shelves when the Eastern Illinois Food Bank delivers from 2000-10000 lbs. of food twice monthly. Others assemble the food for distribution- from 100-150 bags per week. Others head to Panera at closing time to pick up their excess and then our wonderful Bread Ladies repackage the bread for distribution. Yet others bring bread and sweets from St Joe IGA. And of course, our hearty volunteers who work in the parking lot in all weather making sure our guests get the food in to their vehicles, backpacks, and grocery carts. Our fresh produce is supplemented by our Garden volunteers who tend and harvest our garden.
Who pays for the Food Pantry and how can I help?
The food pantry is financially supported by our very generous parishioners and members of our community. We also receive food under the government commodities program which allows us to stretch our donated dollars and provide more protein and fruits/vegetables. Also, we receive bread and sweets from St Joe’s IGA and Panera near the mall.
You can contribute financially by writing a check to St. Patrick Catholic Church, 708 W. Main St., Urbana, IL. In the memo of your check, please write “St. Patrick Food Pantry.” You can also click here to donate online.
There are many ways to get involved including sorting deliveries on Tuesday mornings or volunteering during food distribution on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you are interested in becoming involved with the St. Patrick Food Pantry, please email Susan.
Members of St. Patrick Catholic Church also put together Thanksgiving baskets with food and gifts for those in need. In addition, SVDP hosts a community dinner annually for our frequent guests of the food pantry and their families. This is a nice opportunity for our parish family to get to know our guests. If you’d like to help with any of these efforts, please contact Susan here.
How it all began:
Sophia Zeigler arrived at St. Patrick’s in 1963 and wasted no time looking for ways to help the neediest in our community. She volunteered to make lunches for the homeless who came to St. Jude Catholic Worker House. She made gallons and gallons of soup in St. Patrick kitchen that she froze and delivered to the Worker House.
Realizing that a number of people in our community needed more meals than just lunch, she looked for ways to provide groceries so that people could prepare meals at home. Eventually she obtained permission to set up a food pantry at St. Patrick—and volunteered to oversee it for the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
Sophia became known throughout the C-U community as someone ready to help those in need. Social workers, hospital aides, and police realized that their clients could get help at St. Patrick simply by asking for Sophia. In the early Seventies, Sophia’s records indicated that she’d given groceries to 25-30 people a week; when she retired in 2002 (“my legs just won’t let me do this any longer”) the number had grown to 30-35 people a day.
In addition, Sophia used the resources of the SVDP to help those in need of gas, a bus ticket, or a place to stay overnight. She frequently came out at night in response to a call for help. Hers was “the natural, instinctive reaction of a loving heart,” Fr. Joe Hogan remarked in his homily at Sophia’s memorial Mass on Dec. 4. “The Church is for all God’s children, . . . but obviously the greatest concern of the Church must be for those who need the most help—those made helpless by sickness, poverty, lack of education, or cruelty. Sophia realized this and helped us to realize it. She was incredibly kind and generous, especially to the poorest of the poor.”
Sophia also helped with parish fundraising. She donated 100 homemade aprons to the Women of St. Patrick Christmas sale in 2011, and her creampuffs regularly sold out at the Knights of Columbus Lenten dinners. Everything she gave, she gave from the heart. Those who knew her can relate many stories of her kindness and generosity.
Fr. George Remm recognized this spirit in Sophia during his 16 years as pastor at St. Patrick’s. He sent the following reflection to share with our readers: “The spirit of the St. Vincent de Paul Society is to welcome and help the poor. No one I’ve ever known has better exemplified that spirit than Sophia Zeigler. I think she spent more time at the parish center than I did, and that time was spent in prayer, daily Mass, preparing breakfast for those who gathered after Mass, but most of all keeping up the stock in the pantry for distribution to the poor, and of course overseeing the daily distribution of food to the needy. She would also respond, day and night, to calls from the local police departments to provide emergency assistance to transients, especially families.
“I once asked Sophia why she did all this. She said that I and other priests always tell the congregation in our homilies that Jesus identifies with the poor and that we must reach out to them. So she does. It was as simple as that. Sophia did what Jesus asked of us. I sometimes worried about her going out on calls at night to encounter unknown situations. But she was utterly fearless. God watched out for her in this life. I’m sure God has welcomed her to the banquet of heaven, ‘for whatever you did for the least of my brethren you did for me.’”
