MIAMI | Storm clouds gathered as the City of Miami threatened to close the feeding program that the local Missionaries of Charity had been doing for three decades. But seemingly as fast as it loomed, the storm faded.

The order of sisters, founded by the late Mother Teresa, had been feeding hundreds of the homeless every week for more than three decades. But in late March, the city said the sisters lacked a permit.

This week — after a flurry of newspaper articles and TV news reports — the city backed down.

"It's really a miracle the way it was resolved," said Thomas K. Equels, an attorney who often works pro bono for Church causes. "And I have to attribute it to the beautiful lives of the sisters. Their spirituality and simplicity created public pressure to do the right thing."

The mission, which includes a family shelter as well as a kitchen, was founded by Mother Teresa in 1980 — in an area flanked by Dade County Jail, Jackson Memorial Hospital and Claude Pepper Towers. Up to 300 people are served meals by the diminutive nuns, who wear habits resembling blue-and-white saris.

A code enforcement officer on March 20 ordered the sisters to stop the feeding on the grounds that they had no permit to do so. The crisis mushroomed this month with reports in media ranging from the Miami Herald to El Nuevo Herald to the Catholic News Agency to Fox News.

It also drew the attention of Equels and his wife, fellow attorney Laura Fabar-Equels. He visited the Missionaries of Charity and dug through their records — and found the city had issued a "conditional use" permit for feeding and sheltering the poor back in 1982.

Ironically, the city then wrote a notice of violation in 2002, similar to the one this year. The city dismissed the notice after the sisters produced the earlier permit. So the notice this year was a second case of amnesia for the city.

After finding the documents, Equels relayed the information to Pat Santangelo, a top aide to Mayor Tomas Regalado — and a parishioner, along with Equels, at Notre Dame d'Haiti Mission in Miami. Santangelo then met this past Wednesday with Sister Lima Marie, the superior at the convent, to assure her the feeding program could continue.

The same day, the city announced that it had voided its own notification of violation. It was a satisfying conclusion for Equels.

"When you see a situation like this, it's a chance to stand up and do something," he said. "There was no way my wife and I could stand by and let a convent be steamrollered by a political machine out of control."

But why did the city jump on the matter now, after more than a decade? Because complaints had risen fast over the last six months, said Miami Commissioner Wifredo "Willy" Gort, who represents the district that includes the mission. Where the sisters used to serve 50 people, the clientele is now as high as 300, he said.

Gort said hospital employees and elderly women complained that hundreds of people would mill in the street outside the mission before mealtimes, then afterward as well. Some would relieve themselves in public; others were "becoming very aggressive in their panhandling," Gort said.

"It's a complex group," he said of those served by the mission. "Some are just homeless people. Some are mentally ill. Some are on drugs or have alcohol problems."

But Equels' wife, Laura Fabar-Equels, pointed out that it wasn’t the sisters who put people on the street — it was the jail and hospital, after discharging patients or inmates.

"(The sisters) are trying to solve the problem, not be the problem," she said. "They're dedicating their time feeding and putting people up. They just want to do Mother Teresa's work."

Gort's ideal solution would be to channel quick help for those in the mission crowd to groups that can provide rehab, job training and other services. He said he plans to get the Missionaries of Charity in a meeting with the city's Homeless Trust and other organizations that help the homeless.

"We don’t want to stop the Missionaries of Charity from doing good work," said Gort, who added that he himself is Catholic and attends Corpus Christi Parish in Miami. "It just needs to be done in an orderly way. We need to feed and shelter people, and to protect the residents."