Every day, twice a day, Father Robert Caudill presides over the soup kitchen at All Saints Catholic Mission. Every day, dozens of homeless individuals come to the small church, seeking warm food, showers, clean clothes and kindness.
And every day, for a decade, the City of Oakland Park, a small municipality north of Fort Lauderdale, has fined Caudill $125 for operating a non-permitted soup kitchen, adding up to a debt of about $500,000. He has no intention to pay any of it and no intention to stop feeding the poor. Not until “Jesus calls me home,” he likes to say.
On a recent afternoon, homeless South Floridians waited patiently in the pews for the priest, known as Father Bob, to wave them up to a window where volunteers hand out trays of chicken, vegetables and donuts. A sign next to the window reads: “Religion that doesn’t help isn’t one.”
All Saints has been locked in a legal battle with Oakland Park since 2016, when Caudill first sued the city over allegedly violating his religious freedom. The city argues that All Saints’ soup kitchen operation breaks zoning rules because the city commission rezoned the area in 2014…