Frank Kartheiser is Comfortable With Your Discomfort

Frank Kartheiser
Frank Kartheiser ’72, Hon. ’19 outside the Mustard Seed, a food pantry, soup kitchen and Worcester staple now in its 53rd year of operation. The nonprofit's slogan: “Everybody eats.”

The community organizer and co-founder of the Mustard Seed soup kitchen and food pantry has been feeding the poor and clothing the hungry of Worcester for more than 50 years. His greatest dream is that it closes; yet the need continues to grow.

Credit the Dominicans, the Jesuits, Brown University, chance, fate, football or an intrepid Providence cabbie — all played their part in how high school senior Frank Kartheiser ’72, Hon. ’19 ended up on the steps of the Hogan Campus Center without any idea of what to do next. 

It was 1968, and Kartheiser, a high school football player, had traveled east from Chicago at the invitation of the Brown University football team, when, on a whim, the Dominican-educated Kartheiser hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him to “Warchester” — specifically, the College of the Holy Cross. The cabbie dropped him at the top of College Hill. With no appointment and no one to meet, Kartheiser sat on the steps of Hogan and thought, What am I doing here? I’m a thousand miles away from everybody I love and care about. What am I doing?

Fifty-seven years later, Kartheiser smiles. 

“It worked out OK.” 

Kartheiser has spent more than 50 years in Worcester, working for the betterment of his neighbors in a variety of ways and roles. He began with the Mustard Seed, a soup kitchen and food pantry he co-founded in 1972 with his wife, the late Mary Brenda Norton Kartheiser, and the late Shawn Donovan ’70. The Mustard Seed has been a Worcester staple ever since and launched Kartheiser’s career as a social justice advocate, community organizer and founder of subsequent organizations, including Worcester Interfaith, a multiracial community organization. 

Kartheiser’s freshman year, 1968, was particularly tumultuous in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated within months of one another, King one week before the Civil Rights Act became law. On campus, students like Kartheiser joined peace and justice coalitions and staged protests over the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

His intention in coming to Holy Cross was to get a solid education, play some football and become a businessman, but world events and the death of a friend and high school classmate, a serviceman in the Vietnam War, moved Kartheiser to make a life-altering decision in 1971, his junior year. 

“The stories about Vietnam and what was happening, why we were there — the difficulty even for the administration to explain what we were doing there — spurred me to identify professors who could help me think about it,” Kartheiser says. “People were dying, and stopping the war felt more and more urgent.” 

He decided he would drop out of school to do anti-war work. If drafted, he intended to be a conscientious objector.

At a Catholic Peace Fellowship meeting, Kartheiser ran into Professor David J. O’Brien, Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies, and told him of his decision. The two had been friends since meeting on a picket line two years earlier at an A&P warehouse, then at the bottom of College Hill. They were there supporting the United Farm Workers, the labor union formerly known as the National Farm Workers Association, founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. With his parents’ permission, Kartheiser left Holy Cross and lived with the O’Brien family for a year while working at Worcester State Hospital, counseling people with heroin addictions.

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Collage of photos of Frank Kartheiser, David J. O'Brien, Shawn Donovan, Mustard Seed sign
(clockwise from left) Kartheiser in his student days; David J. O'Brien, professor emeritus, Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies; Mustard Seed co-founder Shawn Donovan ’70; Mustard Seed handwritten sign.

O’Brien introduced Kartheiser to the Catholic Worker Movement, and the more the younger man learned about social justice and activism, the more his thoughts turned to performing works of mercy as an expression of protest. Kartheiser and Donovan decided to establish a community space in Worcester, settling on a storefront at the corner of Pleasant and West streets, 2.5 miles from Holy Cross. 

It was a second “How-did-I-get-here?” moment for Kartheiser, and this one was on display for all the neighborhood to see.

“A FAITH-NECESSARY JOURNEY” 

“We opened in October of 1972, and we were just sitting in this big, empty storefront. And we’d said to each other that we weren’t going to decide what to do; we were going to wait and see what the people think the need is,” Kartheiser recalls. He chuckles at the memory. 

After a few days of wait-and-see, a woman walked into the building. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked Kartheiser and Donovan. 

“We said, ‘We don’t know. What do you think we should be doing?’” Kartheiser recalls. 

“Well,” she said, “get some coffee. Come on, guys. Put a pot of coffee on.” 

Donovan and Kartheiser bought a coffee pot; the neighborhood woman brought her friends. Then, there was a suggestion that they serve soup. Kartheiser and Donovan set soup to heat on a radiator as the space didn’t have a kitchen. There was no plan, no budget, no paid staff. Some people came with food, some to dine. And that was fine by the founders, who saw a shared meal as less an extension of charity than an opportunity to create community.

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Black and white photo of the Mustard Seed dining room
A busy evening in the dining room of the original Mustard Seed location.

Eleven months into their first year, there was a trash bin fire, and the landlord wanted the Mustard Seed out of his building. Soon thereafter, a house on Piedmont Street was listed for sale, and a down payment arrived from an unexpected source: A man contacted the Mustard Seed organizers sharing that his daughters had raised $3,000 selling Mustard Seed key chains, purchased for 10¢ and sold for $2. 

“Three grand was enough to put a down payment on the triple-decker at 93 Piedmont St.,” Kartheiser says. 

The “Seed,” as Kartheiser and other volunteers call it, was back in business. The Kartheisers lived in the inner-city neighborhood, where they raised two daughters, Alexandra and Kendra. Over the years, Kartheiser founded or co-founded other organizations, such as the Piedmont Resident Organization, the Castle Street Housing Cooperative, the Worcester Inter-Religious Legislative Network, Worcester Interfaith and the Worcester Community-Labor Coalition. In 1987, he returned to Holy Cross, earning his bachelor’s degree in religious studies the following spring.

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Frank Kartheiser at Holy Cross commencement
Kartheiser receiving his honorary degree in 2019.

Kartheiser’s professional career has never taken him far from Piedmont Street, literally or figuratively. He worked for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester, first as director of the Urban Ministry Commission and, later, as associate director of religious education. In 1989, he co-founded the diocese’s quarterly newsletter on social justice, “Metanoia.” Though now technically retired, Kartheiser still volunteers at the Mustard Seed and, since 2009, has taught community organizing strategies at the graduate level at Clark University. 

In his various roles, Kartheiser has worked to create neighborhood development and school and youth job programs — and even engineered the reopening of neighborhood pools — all while volunteering at the Mustard Seed and, of course, protesting when the opportunity arises. As recently as spring 2025, Kartheiser was in Groton, Connecticut, protesting nuclear war at the naval submarine base.

Kartheiser will tell you it’s always been his goal to see the Mustard Seed close for lack of need. It’s a miracle, really, that it has stayed open for a half-century, as it is powered almost entirely by volunteers and donations. Asked about any potential loaves and fishes moments, Kartheiser laughs. Yes. Has it been more of a faith-testing or a faith-deepening experience?

“It’s always been a faith-necessary journey,” he replies.

“DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS. THEY’RE KEY TO MOVING INTO ACTION”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 47 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2023.

The Worcester County Food Bank’s July 2024 report, “Worcester Community Food Assessment,” stated that 440 Worcester families totaling 1,300 household members are supported daily with donated food from the Mustard Seed and its partners around the city.

But social issues don’t exist in isolation, the dinner guests at the Mustard Seed will tell you. Food insecurity, homelessness and violence are perennial bedfellows.

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Black and white photo of the Mustard Seed
The Mustard Seed moved to its permanent home on Piedmont Street one year after its founding.

Direct service and social change, the two-feet model of social justice implicit in Catholic Social Teaching, is the strategy driving Kartheiser’s community organizing. The basic tool of community organizing is building relationships, Kartheiser says. And those relationships need to be ones of mutual respect, shared and personal.

“A good organizer needs to spend most of her time doing relational meetings,” Kartheiser says, while sipping coffee one early spring afternoon in Hogan Campus Center. “You’ve got to know your folks; you’ve got to find leaders and develop them, develop relationships. They’re key to moving into action on issues.

“As organizers, we’re trying to think of the end game, and we have many different issues: affordable housing, anti-hunger, safe neighborhoods,” he continues. “As a matter of fact, that’s what’s great about a community organization: It’s not a one-issue thing; it’s always multi-issue.”

Measuring success in the face of millennia-old social problems is tough, but Kartheiser has had wins. Years ago, he and other organizers rallied support for preserving an after-school program for four Worcester public schools. The district superintendent cut the funding in his proposed budget. Kartheiser and 250 community members descended on a school committee meeting and asked that it be funded for the coming school year. 

“We had 250 people in a room that holds 200, and everyone’s squashed in,” Kartheiser recalls. The memory makes him smile. 

One by one, audience members approached the microphone, asking committee members to fund the program. 

“They got the picture,” Kartheiser says of the school committee. “The vote ended up being 5-2 in favor of level funding.”

That’s what’s great about a community organization: It’s not a one-issue thing; it’s always multi-issue.

Frank Kartheiser ’72, Hon. ’19

To say retirement hasn’t slowed Kartheiser down or that he is busier than ever would be a trite way to describe a man who would have his legacy defined by the agitation he has wrought. 

“I don’t know my Gospels as well as some,” Kartheiser says, “but I want to be one of those people who gives comfort to those who need comfort and causes those with means to be uncomfortable — that kind of thing.” 

“HE’S A LEADER, BUT A TRUE SERVANT” 

So, these days you’ll still find Kartheiser at the Mustard Seed at least once a week, usually on Tuesdays. The soup kitchen and food pantry are still powered by donations and devoted volunteer labor, but the number of parishes providing meals has dwindled, and most of the volunteers look a decade or more into AARP membership. On a rainy night in June, Kartheiser and seven other volunteers pass out clothing and toiletries along with the evening meal. Rainy nights are particularly hectic because unhoused people need to exchange wet clothing, and sometimes bedding, for dry gear.

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Frank Kartheiser and volunteers in the Mustard Seed kitchen
Kartheiser and volunteers on a typical evening, prepping meals for guests.
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Frank Kartheiser and volunteers in the Mustard Seed kitchen
"He would never tell a person he started the Mustard Seed,” volunteer Paula Bushey says. “Frank would never voluntarily tell someone that.”

Asked what the Mustard Seed needs at the moment, volunteer and Mustard Seed board member Paula Bushey gives a one-word answer: “Everything.” 

Bushey has been working alongside Kartheiser on Tuesday nights for about a decade, as well as teaching confirmation classes with him at their local parish. She stops at a table near the kitchen to greet volunteer Geraldine DiNardo and asks her to share her nickname for Kartheiser. DiNardo’s answer is barely heard above the din of the dining room. 

“White knight, right, Geraldine?” Bushey prompts. 

DiNardo nods. In fact, “White Knight” is the title of the chapter devoted to Kartheiser in the woman’s 2016 memoir, “Saints and Rascals ... a Catholic Worker Memoir.”

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Frank Kartheiser, Sophia Cerundolo, Abbie Simpson, Paula Bushey
Confirmation teachers Kartheiser and Bushey with students Sophia Cerundolo and Abbie Simpson on their confirmation day.

“Frank is probably the most influential person in my life, besides my parents,” Bushey says. “His example, his generosity towards people, his caring for people and his activism — trying to change things difficult to change, protesting nuclear war and things like that — he’s shown me that if you want to effect change, you’ve got to be able to meet people in the middle in order to move them towards something. 

“He’s a leader, but a true servant,” she continues. “He’s that quiet guy serving meals, taking that person to the doctor’s, moving this person — and he’s not telling you about it. He would never tell a person he started the Mustard Seed. Frank would never voluntarily tell someone that.”

If this night is any indication, Kartheiser’s default mode is humility. You suspect he treats the church leader or state legislator with the same care and deference with which he brings a homeless man a second plate of food. He is quiet and unassuming, drawing attention to himself only at the outset of the meal when he asks patrons to join him in prayer.

I want to be one of those people who gives comfort to those who need comfort and causes those with means to be uncomfortable — that kind of thing.

Frank Kartheiser ’72, Hon. ’19

The Mustard Seed’s slogan is, “Everybody eats.” For some diners like David (last name withheld), who takes the bus from nearby Auburn to Piedmont Street, the basement food pantry is keeping him going on the days he can’t get to the soup kitchen. Unemployed at the moment, he’s hoping to find a job soon, he confides.

“What kind of job are you looking for?”

“The one that pays money,” David replies. He’s been a regular at the Mustard Seed for five years now.

Amiable and chatty, David is eager to share his evening’s haul. He opens a small plastic bag containing a box of prepared tomato soup wedged between onions, potatoes and celery.

“I can stretch this,” he says and smiles.

He asks what a writer is doing at the Mustard Seed. With the answer: to write a profile of one of the founders, David’s smile collapses in consternation.

“Oh,” David says, scanning the room.

“Who’s that?”