Alice Callaghan

Alice Callaghan (born circa 1947, Calgary, Alberta) is an Episcopalian priest and a former Roman Catholic nun. She is also an advocate of the homeless and impoverished people of downtown Los Angeles.

Early years

Her family moved from Canada to southern California when she was a small child. Diminutive and athletic, she became a proficient surfer in Newport Beach. She attended college and became a nun. She left the convent in order to become an Episcopalian priest. Seeing the grinding poverty of skid row, she decided to "make [herself] useful there."

Activism

Callaghan participated in anti-war protests during the Vietnam War.

Callaghan founded Las Familias del Pueblo, a Skid Row community center, in June 1981 in a one-room storefront near the neighborhood. She remained its director as of 2021, when it moved to a larger building. She also founded the SRO Housing Trust.

As of 1982, she was an associate minister at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

In May 1983, she led a protest demanding that the city of Los Angeles install a traffic light on one block of Sixth Street, citing concerns for children crossing the street in the area.

In the late 1990s, Callaghan worked as a tutor for young Latino immigrant students. In 1998, she supported Proposition 227, which largely dismantled California's bilingual education system, on the grounds that Spanish-speaking students were not being taught English nor receiving an equivalent education to English-speaking students.