TOLEDO—Gerard Thomas Straub uses his camera to shine light into the darkest corners of global poverty.

The Catholic filmmaker from North Hollywood, Calif., has documented the faces and stories of the poor by living among them in Kenya, India, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, the Philippines and Uganda. He has done the same with the homeless on the streets of Philadelphia, Detroit and Los Angeles in the United States.

Gerard Thomas Straub, a Catholic filmmaker who chronicles the plight of the poor, visited two Toledo area Catholic high schools in February. (Chronicle photo by Laurie Stevens)

His gritty films are screened at churches, high schools and universities across the country to raise awareness, yet Mr. Straub insists his intention is not to make his audiences feel guilty.

“I simply want to show you the reality of life for the poor, and connect the plight of the poor with our faith, which tells us to do something about it — to do something to relieve the suffering,” says Mr. Straub, who visited Toledo in February to screen clips and share his story of faith with hundreds of Catholic high school students at St. Ursula Academy and St. Francis de Sales High School.

“Every one of us can do something,” he adds. “Not knowing what to do is not an excuse to do nothing.”

For the former soap opera producer, it took a dramatic encounter with St. Francis of Assisi to open his eyes to the poor.

“I once was a network television producer, but beyond that, I was also a committed atheist,” he told the audience during a public evening presentation Feb. 20 at St. Ursula. “St. Francis, by God’s grace, changed all that.”

His career in television began at age 17 with a job at CBS on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and took off after he was selected for an executive training program.

“I was actually an executive at CBS in New York by the time I was 21. By the time I was 30, I had my own network show,” says Mr. Straub. “I was producing the hottest show on television at the time, ‘General Hospital.’ ”

He enjoyed power and prestige in the position, giving stars like Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore their first jobs. Yet Mr. Straub, who was raised Catholic and even enrolled briefly in a minor seminary, also drifted far from God. “I worshipped at the altar of television,” he says.

Eventually he became disillusioned with daytime television and left the industry to pursue a career in writing. While working on a book exploring the connection between creativity and spirituality in the figures of Vincent van Gogh and St. Francis of Assisi, he traveled to France and Italy seeking inspiration.

It was on that trip, he says, that God unexpectedly broke through the silence.

Venturing into a church at a Franciscan friary in Rome to admire the art, he noticed a copy of the Liturgy of the Hours and opened the book randomly to Psalm 63. His eye was caught by the bolded phrase, “A soul thirsting for God.”

As he read the psalm, he felt a sudden overwhelming presence of God, and knew at that moment, God was real and loved him. “I was transformed from an atheist who denied God, to a pilgrim who wanted to know more about God,” he says.

He began writing a book about St. Francis called “The Sun and Moon Over Assisi,” which piqued his interest in the love St. Francis displayed not only for the poor, but also for poverty.

Struggling to understand this notion, he visited the worst slum in Philadelphia to interact with the poor and homeless.

The Franciscan friars serving at the St. Francis Inn soup kitchen in Philadelphia inspired him in 1997 to make a documentary about their ministry called “We Have a Table for Four Ready.” It aired on PBS, and the friars received more than $250,000 in donations from viewers to build a new soup kitchen.

“I had this inkling that perhaps we could put the power of film at the service of the poor,” Mr. Straub recalls.

Step in faith
Six years ago, at age 54, Mr. Straub founded the nonprofit San Damiano Foundation to do just that.

He has now created 12 films, mostly working alone to capture footage and still photos using small digital video cameras and a digital still camera.

Mr. Straub, a Secular Franciscan, describes each film as a step in faith. He follows the example of St. Francis, who saw voluntary poverty as a way for him to be dependent upon God for everything.

With “no funds in the bank,” he begins each film trusting the money he needs to finish it will come, and “inevitably it does.”

During his Toledo visit, Mr. Straub was thrilled to meet one local man who has generously funded his work.

Mike Peak, a member of Findlay St. Michael, has donated so much money to The San Damiano Foundation in the past five years that Mr. Straub refers to him as the “guardian angel of San Damiano.”

Mr. Peak learned of Mr. Straub’s work from a mutual acquaintance, Msgr. Richard Albert, who oversees a hospital for lepers in Jamaica that both men have visited.

Mr. Peak has been a major supporter of Mr. Straub’s newest documentary set in Uganda, “The Fragrant Spirit of Life,” due to be completed this summer.

In Toledo the filmmaker previewed footage for the film shot on two trips in the past year to Uganda, a country devastated by civil war and AIDS.

He and his assistant take the viewer to crowded refugee camps, a crude hospital and a remote, impoverished village. They also filmed the crowded slums in the capital city of Kampala after torrential rains flooded its streets. Children wade through filthy water and families teeter on the narrow, dry ledges outside their flooded shanties with no place else to go.

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of these films is their specificity, which Mr. Straub achieves by entering into dialogue with his subjects to capture their most personal stories on camera.

Their names and faces stay with the viewer long after the film ends.

Kevin Shannon, director of campus ministry at St. Ursula, says he hopes the films motivate the students to look beyond themselves and live the Gospel message.

“Few of us really take the time to see that level of honesty or realism when it comes to the poor,” he says. “The first step is realizing what the problems are.”

For more information on the work of Gerard Thomas Straub, visit www.sandamianofoundation.org.