PHIL JONES: Children singing the national anthem of Thailand -- it's how their school day begins. After the anthem, it's time for their prayers, led by the teachers.
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS: Bow once to the Buddha. The Buddha is great.
JONES: What's so unique about this scene is, the kids are praying to Buddha in a Catholic school. But that's just fine with Father Joe Maier, who says he doesn't care if the children say their "Hail Marys" to a statue of Buddha as long as they know some prayers to help them deal with life. They live in Klong Toey, amidst poverty, drugs, gang violence, and child sex abuse. Father Maier came here more than 30 years ago and never left.Father JOE MAIER: They accepted me. They gave me great honor. They gave me great, great honor and said, "You can come and stay with us."
JONES: Joe Maier grew up in Washington State an angry young man, his mother a Roman Catholic, his father a Protestant.
Fr. MAIER: My father was -- he wasn't a ne'er-do-well, but he was a weak man. He drank a lot of whisky, didn't take care of us. I hurt a lot. I hurt bad. I said, "I really want to help other children so they don't hurt like I did."
JONES: Living in Klong Toey is truly living on the wrong side of the tracks. In that direction -- about a mile away -- all the symbols and structures of wealth in downtown Bangkok. But go on the other side of the tracks in that direction for about a mile -- and two miles long -- and you'll find the worst of Bangkok's slums.Father Joe went to Thailand with two assignments.
Fr. MAIER: To become a missionary priest and to work with the people and to convert them to Christianity and become holy, I guess. They converted me, though.
JONES (To Fr. Maier): Who converted you?
Fr. MAIER: The Buddhists and Muslims. I've only learned to be a Christian by learning from the Muslims and Buddhists: tolerance and calmness and peace.
I used to live back here.
JONES: Father Joe chose to live in a slum shack located in the slaughterhouse district near the seamy port of Bangkok.
Fr. MAIER: Don't think there's one honest, lawful occupation in this whole slum. It's a great slum. It's a community. They live together. This is where life goes on.JONES: The young priest thought it was, in his word, "cool" to live in the midst of all the thugs and gangsters.
(To Fr. Maier): Why did you feel you had to live right here, in this slum?
Fr. MAIER: Because that's where Jesus would be. You can't live uptown.
JONES: Back in the '70s, as he walked through Klong Toey, he saw a problem he could do something about.
Fr. MAIER: We said, "Heck, kids aren't going to school. Let's start a kindergarten."
JONES: He did, and now there are 33 preschools teaching 4,000 kids. Most of the teachers got their start in these same slum schools.
Fr. MAIER: This might be the only chance for them to learn. Seventy thousand children have graduated from our schools, our kindergarten. And they're going on to school. They know how to read and write. And that's really neat. We've given them a gift they'll never, ever lose. What a glorious way to spend your life.JONES (To Fr. Maier): Better than being a priest, a minister?
Fr. MAIER: Oh, I'm a priest. But, yeah, I'm a priest. This is what priests are supposed to do.
JONES: Besides the schools, there's a Mercy Center, which is a campus that provides housing for homeless kids who have been rescued from abusive parents or orphaned by the AIDS crisis. There is also a hospice for adult AIDS victims.
At another building -- a safe house for girls. They look happy, but all have sad family stories. They've been saved from the world of violence. One mother sold her daughter for about $100.
Fr. MAIER: This is the slum where the girls who work at night live.
These plaques bear the name of major individual donor John Cook. He's a wealthy Atlanta businessman who has given more than $3 million for expansion of facilities at Mercy Center -- including a new home for Father Joe.
Ms. JEANNE HALLACY (Documentary Producer): Father was with her in those final days. She was in a lot of pain. He got down on the floor, and he leaned next to her and held onto her and told her, "I'm right here, I'm not going to go away. I'm going to be with you all that time until you go; I'll be with you." To me it was a great act of his faith, and it was a great lesson of someone who has faith, who acts it out.
Ms. HALLACY: Father Joe is a local superstar. He's a hero. He's a household name -- someone that every person in this entire slum knows, and he knows many of them by name, and he knows their kids' names.
Ms. HALLACY: Every week those tribes have to gather like a family council. They commune, give pause, and give thanks to the greater being. He has them learn prayers, but he doesn't enforce it upon them by way of stripping away their Buddhist identity. He's not an outsider imposing something foreign upon a Thai slum community.
