When leaders of the Archdiocese of Detroit began looking for solutions to the mounting poverty in the Detroit metropolitan area, they discovered that the traditional ministries of soup kitchens, clothing drives and holiday baskets were not changing the impoverished environment of the city. The city’s decline was more structural, institutional and political, and they realized that they were looking squarely into an injustice that had developed and permeated the community for the past 40 years—urban sprawl. The archdiocese joined a coalition of interfaith religious congregations that is working hard not only to curb and contain urban sprawl, but also to approach it as a moral issue that demands a response of justice for all people living in the region.
Read Olga Bonfiglio's full article from 2002 here.