Alfred Boeddeker

Alfred Boeddeker, O.F.M. (August 7, 1903 — January 1, 1994) was an American Franciscan friar who is best known for having founded humanitarian programs to aid the poor and marginalised in the San Francisco Bay Area. These programs, named by Father Boeddeker for Saint Anthony of Padua, include the St. Anthony Dining Room (1950), the St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic (1956), and the St. Anthony Farm, 315 acres near Petaluma in Sonoma County, California.

Biography
Father Boeddeker, born in San Francisco, California, joined the Franciscans in 1921 and was ordained a priest in 1927. He studied theology at the Santa Barbara Seminary, pastored the St. Rafael Church in Goleta, California, and from 1930 to 1933 studied in Rome, Italy. After his return from Rome, he taught for fifteen years at the Franciscan School of Theology at the Mission Santa Barbara.

Boeddeker was once selected to start a Catholic university in Hankow, China. In preparation for this assignment, he enrolled in a graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley to study Mandarin, Japanese and Russian languages and Chinese history and politics. The Hankow plans were cancelled, however, after the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949.

Father Boeddeker was then appointed pastor of St. Boniface Church in the Tenderloin, San Francisco, California, where he remained for the rest of his long life. Not far from this church, two of Boeddeker's sayings are prominently displayed on the walls of the St. Anthony Dining Room on Jones Street:
 * “The great activity of our life is to love.”
 * “I see God as one act—just loving, like the sun always shining.”

At least one book has been written about Father Boeddeker: The Man Behind the Miracle: the Story of Alfred Boeddeker, O.F.M., by Madeline Hartmann. Fort Bragg: Lost Coast Press (2000). ISBN 1-882-89740-4.