By Paul Tennant
HAVERHILL — Two days a week isn't enough.
As the number of families struggling to put food on the table grows, a local church is expanding its food pantry operation to provide people with free groceries.
The Sacred Hearts Church pantry, which has been helping needy people for 30 years, has added a third day to its schedule.
Until now, the pantry has been open from 8:30 to 10:45 a.m. Mondays and Fridays. Now it also will be open on Wednesdays at that same time.
The pantry is formally known as the Angelo Petrozzelli Service Center, at the rear of Sacred Hearts Church in Bradford.
Saying that many more people are having a hard time putting food on their tables because of being unemployed, Bill LaPierre, president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Sacred Hearts Church, said, "We're trying to meet that need."
"It's tripled," he said, referring to the increase in people who depend on the pantry for food.
To show how much more food they're going through there, LaPierre said the pantry now rents a U-Haul truck to pick up food, much of it from the Boston Food Bank. The panel truck being used previously is no longer big enough to do the job, he said.
The Sacred Hearts pantry goes through 3 tons of food to serve 200 families each week, LaPierre said. The pantry is staffed entirely by volunteers, mostly from Sacred Hearts Church, he said.
About two years ago, the church dedicated the pantry in honor of Petrozzelli, president of Design Partnership, a local architectural firm. When Kathleen Petrozzelli, Angelo's wife, won the Catholic Parishes Raffle three years ago, she donated $17,000 of the $20,000 prize toward converting what used to be a three-car garage for the priests at Sacred Hearts to the pantry.
The pantry was formerly at the Sacred Hearts Pastoral Center on nearby South Chestnut Street, across from Sacred Hearts School. The narrow street made getting to and from the old location difficult.
John Cuneo, executive director of Community Action Inc., the city's main provider of social services, said the center at Sacred Hearts offers a critical service to people facing hard times. If Sacred Hearts were to stop offering food at the pantry "it would be terrible," he said.
Cuneo said a pantry in Amesbury actually cut back its hours of operation because it could not keep pace with the need.
"We are grateful to anyone who steps up to the plate and helps people facing hard times," he said of the Sacred Hearts pantry. Cuneo knows firsthand that the still sluggish economy hurts more people than a couple of years ago.
"More people are looking for fuel assistance," he said.
Last winter, 4,000 people in the area received help with heating bills, he said.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit 5,000 this winter," he said.
In the 1970s, the federal government paid $750 to families struggling with fuel bills who met the income guidelines, Cuneo said. As of last year, that stipend had been reduced to $650, but recently it was raised to $900, he said.
Lt. Jeff Hardy, who has headed the local Salvation Army for the last four months, also said Sacred Hearts' pantry fulfills an essential mission. The Salvation Army serves meals and provides food to people in need. If Sacred Hearts were to curtail its outreach, the impact on his organization would be "great," Hardy said.
"It would cause more of a drain on our resources," he said.
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An average week at Sacred Hearts pantry
200 families helped
3 tons of food given out
Volunteers provide staffing
