Greg Barrett 
The Gospel of Father Joe 
Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok

Three decades ago in a cordoned-off corner of the developing world an angry Catholic priest armed only with pencil, paper, and crayons, declared a revolution. From a shanty school shared with Buddhists and Muslims in Bangkok’s squatter slums, Father Joe Maier began his advance on abject poverty. Today, his Human Development Foundation and Mercy Centre charity is responsible for thirty-two preschools that have taught more than twenty thousand children how to read and write. Despite the crippling neglect found in impoverishment, he is raising international scholars and injecting a sense of purpose into shantytowns and squatter camps that used to have neither.

Table of Content

Foreword.

Prologue.

PART I: THE CRUCIBLE.

1. Mustard Seeds.

2. The Joe in the Know.

3. Undeveloped, Unpaved Parallels.

4. Rise of the Underground.

5. Smitten.

6. Where Right Equals Might.

PART II: MANIFEST CHANGE.

7. Sticks, Stones, and Bags of Bones.

8. Dead End or Turnaround?

9. The Sanctity and Sanctimony of Life.

10. Wars on Terror.

11. Religious Medal, Spiritual Mettle.

12. Forged by Mercy and Mary.

13. Any Dream Will Do.

PART III: THE LIGHT.

14. Weapons of Mass Construction.

15. Fruit of the Spirit.

16. Elvis.

17. Devil in the Details.

18. Mercy’s Mercy.

19. Slaves of the Economy.

Epilogue.

The Author.

About the author

Greg Barrett is a twenty-year veteran of local, national, and foreign reporting for wire and newspapers in Georgia, the Carolinas, Hawaii, and Maryland. He was a roving correspondent based in the Washington, D.C., bureau for Gannett News Service/USA Today when he met Father Joe Maier, and most recently he worked as a state correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and two sons.