As St. Francis House celebrates 20 years since first opening its doors on Broad Street in New London, people are still asking co-founder Anne Pray Scheibner to explain what it is. That’s not because it’s complicated. Rather, it’s so radically simple that we can’t believe it’s real.

In 1999, when as a columnist for The Day I wrote the first story about St. Francis House, I struggled to understand it myself. I knew it was an Episcopal mission inspired by the 1930s Catholic Worker movement of Dorothy Day, who religiously lived among the people she served.

But what was the program?

Cheerfully, and I thought rather boldly, Anne and her late husband, Emmett Jarrett, told me they didn’t have one. What they had was Melvin, a suddenly homeless man who had been driven out of his apartment in a neighboring low-income high-rise by a bully with a gun.

St. Francis House didn’t provide Melvin with a home, a job, or salvation. Anne and Emmett, an Episcopal priest, simply did what good neighbors should do. They opened their door to him, talked with him, prayed with him, encouraged him, and gave him an occasional meal.

The house has welcomed other Melvins since then, like the troubled neighbor invited in to play the piano “when he wasn’t drunk,” recalls Anne. But countless people less ostensibly needy have found welcome, too.

St. Francis House has never existed just to serve the needy – unless you expand the word to include needs like faith, purpose, and solace. Anne once told me she disliked the word “needy” anyway, because it stigmatizes the poor.

Neighbors from New London and beyond seeking Christian service; community organizers needing a space to strategize; advocates for the homeless and activists from the peace and justice network – all have found welcome. Anne and Emmett raised their son and daughter here.

St. Francis House’s ability to offer short or long-term residences expanded with the purchase of the house next door, christened Victory House. All those accepted help with household chores, participate in prayer life and contribute what they can toward maintenance costs.

The two renovated houses have upgraded the landscape, expanded spiritual, cultural and intellectual activity, and arguably enhanced public safety. Neighbors and friends may borrow from an impressive library of several thousand books on topics such as theology, social justice and poetry.

Given all this refinement, I suppose you could say that on some level St. Francis House and Victory House have gentrified the neighborhood. But if so, it’s gentrification minus all the bad stuff that usually comes with it, like intolerance and driving out the people who were already there.

St. Francis House has embraced, not displaced, the people who were there when Emmett and Anne arrived – all of them.

I visited St. Francis House fairly often during my long career at The Day, largely, I’ll admit, because I was in need of a good story. But I came to realize that a story wasn’t all I needed. I wanted “clarification of thought,” which not coincidentally is the title of a discussion series St. Francis House hosts each year, tackling topics such as homelessness, non-violence, faith, community and justice. It’s open to anyone with a civil tongue and respect for diversity. Humility also helps.

“It’s important,” says Anne, “to have a community to reflect with.”

Emmett, who died in 2010, and Anne inspired a column I wrote at the start of the 2003 Iraq War. Although committed to non-violence, they didn’t want to be labeled pacifists. War protesters willing to be arrested (as Emmett was) or to suffer far worse are activists, they said, not pacifists.

Emmett encouraged me to buy a book called “All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time,” edited by Robert Ellsberg (son of Daniel), who joined one of this year’s “Thought” discussions. Anne told me, when I visited her last month, she refers to it every day.

That evening, I pulled the book off my shelf and opened it to Oct. 27. The day’s entry featured the Christian humanist Erasmus (1466-1536), of whom it was written: “He prized the values of charity, tolerance, and moderation … but he lived in a time when such values were in short supply …”

Well. That certainly felt timeless.

Neighborhood, not sainthood, is St. Francis House’s mission. But I’d argue there’s something saintly about being a good neighbor, especially at yet another time when politics and culture are conspiring against it.

Bethe Dufresne is a freelance writer living in Old Mystic. She is a former reporter, editor and columnist for The Day.