Steve Handen, who founded the city’s first soup kitchen and other long-lasting endeavors to give the homeless and the destitute a chance to succeed, died July 12 at age 81.

“He was the conscience of Colorado Springs,” said Donna Johnson, a local clinical psychologist. “He was a natural to do the work he did in social justice.”

Johnson first met Handen in the 1970s, when he was a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, which at that time was on South Tejon Street.

“He started giving people soup at his house, then serving out of the basement of the church,” she said.

As word of free meals in a friendly space spread, Handen sought a larger location.

The all-volunteer operation moved to First Baptist Church and then in 1985 to the Marian House, an old convent near St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Catholic Charities of Central Colorado took over the soup kitchen in 1994 and continues to run it and related services.

A consummate teacher, Handen never stopped pushing people from all walks of life to do a little better, said his daughter, Emmy Handen.

“He wouldn’t let anyone just sit back and feel good about themselves for serving a bowl of soup,” she remembers.

Youth who volunteered at the soup kitchen often would sit with Handen and discuss their experiences, his daughter said.

“They would talk about folks they’d met and their stories,” Emmy Handen said. “It was important to him that working at the soup kitchen or halfway houses was never seen as ‘us’ and ‘them’ — he believed that we all have something to learn from each other, regardless of life circumstances.”

Said Johnson: “He wasn’t only serving soup but asking, ‘Why do we have to serve soup?’”

Handen, who was ordained as a priest in 1965, joined Johnson and other peace activists in protesting the Vietnam War, an action that didn’t sit well with church hierarchy.

He left the priesthood in 1973, married Mary Lynn Sheetz and raised three children, Emmy Handen, David Spence and Luis Mejia, as well as several foster kids.

“For the rest of his life, there were still people who would call him ‘Father Steve,’” Johnson said.

Because even without the collar, Handen’s spirituality guided him into what many say was a calling he couldn’t ignore.

“Steve had a strong faith,” said his friend Chad Glang, who was in a faith group with Handen.

His view on prayer was not that people were to ask God for favors but rather people are here to do God’s work, Glang said.

His main prayer?

“Allow me to hear my prayer,” Glang said Handen told him, referring to how many people don’t listen to their own prayers but rather “give all the responsibility to God” and not confront their issues.

Handen, who lost his dad at age 4, became a universal father to many, said Mary Sprunger-Froese, a member of The Bijou Community that Handen formed. Members subscribe to principles of nonviolence and serving the poor.

In 1981, Handen and four other charter members founded Ithaka Land, a nonprofit that acquired housing for low-income, the homeless, immigrants and released inmates.

Handen also was interested in “building the new society within the shell of the old,” Sprunger-Froese said, along the lines of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker houses or Mahatma Gandhi’s vision.

“He resisted the materialism, militarism and racism Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned as the barriers to a just society and the resistance program Gandhi also engaged in,” she said.

Above all, Sprunger-Froese said, Handen “lived his faith every day.”

“He believed in and promoted the transformation of friend, and enemy, through gentle personalism,” she said. “He advocated for inclusion of those most left out and didn’t believe in unjust structures and policies.”

Handen became a Colorado College professor by happenstance, said Evan Weissman, founding executive director of the Denver-based Warm Cookies of the Revolution, defined as a “civic health club.”

Realizing no one was teaching young minds about nonviolence, Handen in the mid-’90s began a course he created called Foundations of Nonviolence.

Weissman signed up for the class out of curiosity in 1997, when he was a sophomore at Colorado College.

“He saw his community full of training and resources and preparing for war, with the military bases and academies and schools and businesses — and he thought there needed to be at least one alternative,” Weissman said.

Weissman began assisting Handen in 2003 and took over the courses a decade ago.

“He changed the trajectory of my life,” Weissman said. “He showed me that living a life of service was joyous and necessary.

“He taught me that walking the walk is really all we can do.”

Handen also will be remembered for accomplishing a lot and taking little credit for it and fighting new leadership at Ithaka Land, until cancer took over, to preserve affordable housing in the community.

“Steve is probably the single most important person who defined the peace community and caring for the homeless and for the destitute for the past 40 years with very little fanfare,” said Loring Wirbel, chair of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission. “He almost never wanted to be in the forefront of things and instead wanted to encourage others.”

His wicked impression of the fictional Father Guido Sarducci, who appeared on “Saturday Night Live” as a Vatican gossip columnist, also will live on, Glang said.

“I guarantee Steve would make a joke about obituaries being a lie because they only tell all the good stuff about a person,” Weissman said.

A memorial Mass for Handen will be 10 a.m. July 23 at Sacred Heart Parish, 2030 W. Colorado Ave., where Handen was a member.

Contact the writer: debbie.kelley@gazettedev.gazette.com