Carlene Thissen

Based on the book she researched and wrote about him, Carlene Thissen narrates Father Sanders' story with pictures and songs that describe the man and the people who loved him. Father Richard Sanders served as the only priest in Immokalee in the early 1980s, at the height of farm worker immigration, people who came to provide labor to continuously growing agriculture in Southwest Florida. Many believe he was a saint, and some say they saw Jesus in him. Previously a Trappist Monk at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina, Father Sanders felt called from the silence of Mepkin Abbey to be of service first to poor Black people and later, Hispanic farm workers. He founded Naples’ first Spanish Mission at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Naples and was then transferred to Immokalee where he empowered the farm workers for four years before he died at age 47. $27 members, $32 non-members