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Robert Gehrke: After 32 years, the Good Samaritan Program will stop serving sandwiches to Salt Lake City’s poor

For 32 years now, Utah’s homeless and poor have been able to get a simple sack lunch at the Good Samaritan House, a white stone building next to the Cathedral of the Madeleine on South Temple.

Hundreds of people line up as volunteers make sandwiches, pack them into bags with a snack and dessert, send them out the door, sometimes feeding as many as 900 people each day over an 11 hour period, every day of the year.

But after serving literally millions of sandwiches, the Good Samaritan will close its doors at the end of September, part of a restructuring of how the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City serves the poor.