Msgr. Richard Albert, a Bronx native who spent the last four decades in the West Indies helping Jamaicans escape grinding poverty and violence, died on Monday in Kingston, Jamaica. He was 69.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Kingston announced his death without specifying a cause.

That Monsignor Albert was assigned to Jamaica in the first place was more or less a mistake of geography: He was living in a Brooklyn rectory and about to be ordained as a Franciscan priest in 1976 when he applied for what he thought was an assignment in Jamaica, Queens.

But he readily accepted the assignment when he learned that it was in the West Indies, and he rapidly became an outspoken religious figure there. Through his St. Patrick’s Foundation and the Stella Maris Foundation, both in Jamaica, and other philanthropies, he established centers to provide food, education, health and child care, job training and services for drug addicts and people who are H.I.V.-positive. He created homes for older people and for people with leprosy.

As an advocate for the poor, Monsignor Albert challenged the church hierarchy to join his crusade against corruption and injustice in Jamaica.