Vancouver restricting church's mission to help poor, charges pastor

Last Updated: Friday, August 10, 2007 | 1:24 PM PT

CBC News

A Vancouver pastor says a Vancouver city regulation is preventing her church from fulfilling its mandate to help the poor.

Mardi Dolfo-Smith, of the 10th Avenue Church on the west side of Vancouver, says that twice a week, people come in to her church for free food and sometimes shelter.

When the church started to renovate two years ago, the city's planning department said it needed a social services permit, because helping the poor is not in the church-use permit, says the pastor.

The church has since applied for a social services permit, but not all churches have the same resources to meet the permit's onerous conditions, she says.

"We're concerned that the city is separating our faith into different areas. We're also concerned that this will be too onerous for other faith communities, smaller ones, ones that maybe don't have the resources that we have."

The real issue is that churches are called to help the poor, and always have been, says Dolfo-Smith.

"We have people eating here and then in the winters, we have up to 25 people sleeping here at night."

Dolfo-Smith says some neighbours worry that means the area isn't as safe and they have complained to the city

"Part of our religious worship is actually caring for the poor. It's not a separate thing that we kind of do if we feel like it. It's something we're actually commanded to do."

Now the 10th Avenue Church is one of many Vancouver faith communities circulating a petition, asking the city to change its narrow definition of church use. The petitions will be sent to the city in mid-September.

Because of the civic strike in Vancouver, city staff did not return calls from CBC for comment.