People of God

In May of 1890, The Christian Solider, an African American newspaper, identified the Catholic journalist and activist Daniel Arthur Rudd as the "greatest negro Catholic in America." Yet many Catholics today are unaware of Rudd's efforts to bring about positive social change during the early decades of the Jim Crow era. In Daniel Rudd: Calling a Church to Justice, Gary Agee offers a compelling look at the life and work of this visionary who found inspiration in his Catholic faith to fight for the principles of liberty and justice. Born into slavery, Rudd achieved success early on as the publisher of the American Catholic Tribune, one of the most successful black newspapers of its era, and as the founder of the National Black Catholic Congress. Even as Rudd urged his fellow black Catholics to maintain their spiritual home within the fold of the Catholic Church, he called on that same church to live up what he believed to be her cardinal teaching, "the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man." Rudd's hopeful spirit lives on today in the important work of the National Black Catholic Congress, as it carries forward his pursuit of social justice.

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most people, but responded to them in ways that call Catholics to their own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of today. The canonization of Pope John XXIII and the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II call for a fresh look at this remarkable man. Now highly regarded Vatican II historian Massimo Faggioli offers a rich and insightful portrait. His sources include the complete edition of the private diaries of the future John XXIII, published recently in ten volumes, much of which is unavailable in English. Faggioli's use of this treasure of personal notes of the future pope means this biography offers a more complete and nuanced understanding of Angelo Roncalli than is available anywhere else in English at this time. The result is both unforgettable and inspiring.

When asked what he wanted written on his tombstone, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh responded with one word: Priest. This giant of a man-a man who advised presidents and counseled popes, who championed civil rights and world peace, who accepted 16 presidential appointments and 150 honorary degrees, who served an unprecedented thirty-five years as president of the University of Notre Dame-could have listed any number of accolades. Instead, he chose his first and most important vocation. Fr. Ted never felt that his calling to be a priest set him apart. Rather, it drew him into relationships with others and out in service to the world. It was a call to serve as mediator, to bridge the divides that separate church and society, conservatives and liberals, the powerful and those on the margins. He spent his life bringing people together. This new biography is the first to tell the story of the spirituality that shaped one of the twentieth century's most distinguished public servants. It is a story to inspire all those who strive to live out their faith in the midst of a deeply divided world.

The world came to know the Franciscan priest Mychal Judge through the bravery and self-sacrifice he displayed during the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001. But long before his lifeless body was carried out of the rubble (a moment captured in a photograph that became immediately famous), and before he was officially designated "Victim 0001" of that day's attacks, Fr. Judge was, to a great many people, a beloved priest known for his compassion and faith. In Mychal Judge, Francis DeBernardo offers a spiritual biography that will move and fascinate readers. It details the personal history and experiences, including his Irish-American upbringing, his struggles with alcoholism, his care for the marginalized, and his ministry to firefighters, that formed the man who ultimately died running into the North Tower to try to save and minister to the terrified and the dying. Whether meeting him in these pages for the first time or getting to know him better, readers will encounter in Fr. Judge a figure they will not soon forget.

In “Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul”, Deanna Witkowski brings a fresh perspective to the life and music of the legendary jazz pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams (1910-81). As a fellow jazz pianist-composer, adult convert to Catholicism, and liturgical composer, Witkowski offers unique insight gleaned from a twenty-year journey with Williams as her chosen musical and spiritual mentor. Viewing Williams's musical and corporal acts of mercy as part of a singular effort to create community no matter the context, Witkowski examines how Williams created networks of support and friendship through her decades long letter correspondence with various women religious, her charitable work, and her tireless efforts to perform jazz in churches, community centers, concert halls, and schools. Throughout this fascinating story told with equal amounts of deep love and scholarly research, Witkowski illumines Williams's passionate mantra that "jazz is healing to the soul."

In July 2012, a Holy Child sister and two Catholic Workers committed the largest breach in US nuclear security history. They entered an enriched uranium facility armed with candles, bread, Bibles, and roses, to pray and paint peace slogans. As Transform Now Plowshares, they hoped to put nuclear weapons, which target civilians in violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN treaties, on trial, making international news. This book shares their discernments of conscience and the civil resistance legacy of Plowshares with its background of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, while also engaging the work of the Berrigan brothers, the Catonsville nine, and the recent Kings Bay Plowshares seven. Learn their stories and see the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in action.

Who is God? That is the question Elizabeth A. Johnson has spent her life exploring. As a Catholic theologian, writer, teacher, and religious woman, Johnson has searched for "the Living God" and ways to understand God that make sense for our time, perhaps most famously in her groundbreaking book She Who Is. Her work is firmly grounded in the Catholic tradition while it explores the edges of that tradition, pushing it to be more inclusive-a project that has caught the attention of other scholars, everyday Catholics, and sometimes critics. Johnson's own relationship with God as Holy Mystery has helped her to navigate her life's challenges, including finding herself thrust into the spotlight as a headline-making symbol of religious women facing challenges from the church leadership. With this first biography of one of the preeminent Catholic theologians of our time, those who have been enriched by Johnson's work will now find themselves inspired by her remarkable life story.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has been called 'the Asian Pope Francis,' because of his humility, his connectedness to the lives of everyday Catholics, and his insistence on the church's duty to care for the poor and the marginalized. In Luis Antonio Tagle: Leading by Listening, veteran Catholic journalist Cindy Wooden offers a poignant look at this archbishop of Manila who has impressed Catholics around the world. At the world Synod of Bishops on Evangelization in 2012, he told his fellow bishops, 'The church must discover the power of silence. Confronted with the sorrows, doubts, and uncertainties of people, she cannot pretend to give easy solutions. In Jesus, silence becomes the way of attentive listening, compassion, and prayer. It is the way to truth.' While not afraid to speak the truth to power, Cardinal Tagle also is not afraid to listen to the poor, the confused and the searching. Wooden shares much insight into this man of deep faith and compassion, a pastor driven both to bring Christ to the people and to listen to the people in whom Christ lives and through whom he speaks. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us, but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each of them offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day. With the cause for his beatification reportedly moving along rapidly now at the Vatican, this biography of a people's saint traces the events leading up to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero at a chapel altar in San Salvador and the reverberations of that day in El Salvador and beyond. This in-depth look at Archbishop Romero, the pastor-defender of the poor and great witness of the faith, offers a prism through which to view a Catholic understanding of liberation and how to be a church of the poor, for the poor, as Pope Francis calls us to be.

Martin Sheen, best known for his role as a Catholic president in the prestigious television series The West Wing, returned to the practice of his Catholic faith at the age of forty after decades away. After years of battling alcohol addiction, a near-fatal heart attack, and a nervous breakdown, the stage, film, and television actor renewed his dedication to his family and activated his faith with energy, grace, and joy. Through the sacraments, Mass, the rosary, the support of family, and numerous friends and peace and justice activists such as Daniel Berrigan, SJ, and the Catholic Worker Movement, Martin Sheen today sees himself as a man in the pew. He has been arrested more than sixty times for non-violent civil disobedience, speaking out for human rights. Sister Rose Pacatte's unique biography moves beyond tabloid news to include information and inspiring stories gleaned from interviews with Martin Sheen, his sister and brothers, as well as long-time friends. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.

When Shahbaz Bhatti, the lone Christian in Pakistan's cabinet and a determined campaigner for the rights of Christians and members of other faiths was killed, his Taliban-affiliated assassins probably hoped it would be the end of his influence. Instead, Bhatti's stature has only grown after death, and today he looms as a martyr and patron saint for persecuted Christians everywhere. His riveting life, from devoted altar boy in an overwhelming Muslim nation to human rights campaigner, from politician and government minister to martyr, is one of the great Christian dramas of our time, and as long as Christians are at risk anywhere in the world, Shahbaz Bhatti will be a source of inspiration and hope. This book traces the evolution of a martyr, from his roots in a traditionally Catholic village in the Punjab region of Pakistan through his awakening as an activist and political leader. It also explores the possibility that Bhatti may one day be declared a saint of the Catholic Church. It's a story that deserves to be told, everywhere and always, until it's part of the common heritage of Christianity and all humanity.

In Rutilio Grande: A Table for All, veteran journalist Rhina Guidos explores the inspiring life and ministry of the Salvadoran priest whose killing changed the church in El Salvador and the life of his close friend, the country's most prominent church member, Archbishop Oscar Romero. Born in a rural and poor hamlet surrounded by sugarcane fields in El Salvador, Grande went on to study in Europe and Latin America as a member of the Society of Jesus. Though he found himself in the comfort of academia, he gave it up to return to the periphery of the rural world and its people. Inspired by teachings of the Second Vatican Council and a major bishops' meeting in Medellin, Colombia, he and a team set out to teach the poor to read, to stand up for their rights, and to call out injustices perpetrated by the government. Grande's brutal 1977 assassination in a shower of gunfire marked the first notorious killing of a Catholic Church member during El Salvador's civil conflict, but made him one in a long line of El Salvador's Catholic martyrs.

Corita Kent, an American nun and pop artist, led a life of creativity and love that took her in unexpected directions. In this engaging portrait, Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP, offers an in-depth look at Corita Kent, gentle revolutionary of the heart, letting the beauty and truth of her life and art speak for itself. Frances Elizabeth Kent's rise to fame coincided with some of the most socially volatile years of the twentieth century. As Sr. Mary Corita of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters, she became a nationally-respected artist-though the Archbishop of her home city of Los Angeles regarded her work as blasphemous. Seeing no contradiction between the sacred and the secular, Corita designed the US Postal Service's iconic "Love" stamp and created the largest copyrighted work of art in the world, on a gas tank for the Boston Gas Company. These examples and more exemplify the theology and point of view of one of the twentieth century's most famous and fascinating artists.

Most people living in the last quarter of the twentieth century knew Mother Teresa by name and appearance. They could also identify her as the saint of the gutters of Calcutta. Two years after her death, she was still recognized as "the most admired person of the century." So, what is there still to say about her? Quite a bit, as it turns out. The story of both her public and private lives remains little known, and we continue to grapple with the extraordinary things she did, as well as the way that she interpreted the vocation of any would-be follower of Jesus. This biography shows Mother Teresa as the first great saint of television. We came to know her on the screen, and, as such, we felt we knew her in a way that we could not have known the saints before her. Presented in three parts, this biography looks at the preparation, the call, and the legacy of the extraordinary woman whom Pope Francis named Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.

In Francis: Bishop of Rome, Fr. Michael Collins introduced readers to the pope who has grabbed the attention and the spiritual imaginations of Catholics and others around the world. Now, in this second edition, Collins takes account of the most important events and development of his remarkable pontificate. With a focus on compassion, Francis has challenged world leaders to be more attentive to the poor, begun important reforms of the Curia and the Vatican Bank, and called for two synods of bishops to discuss pastoral challenges that face modern families. This new edition, which is 25% longer than the first, includes more details about Jorge Bergoglio's early life and a far more expansive understanding of the pontificate of this remarkable spiritual leader. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.

Fr. James Martin, SJ, is one of the most recognized Catholic priests in the United States. His book My Life with the Saints introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to many saintly heroes. More recently, Building a Bridge called the Catholic Church to more respect and compassion for the LGBT Community-and made Martin not only a friend to LGBT people but a lightning rod for some "traditionalist" Roman Catholics. His articulate and winsome personality has endeared him to millions inside and outside the Church. Now it is time to tell the story of his own life, to explore the experiences that made him the person he is today. And there's no better narrator for the story than Jon M. Sweeney, an award-winning and highly accomplished writer in his own right. In James Martin, SJ: In the Company of Jesus, Sweeney probes Martin's early life, his experiences as a corporate executive, his call to religious life, his ministry and spirituality, his feelings about both the adoration and the criticism he receives from so many, and much more. Readers will come away with a much better understanding of one of today's most interesting and influential Catholics.

Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) is popularly celebrated for his fascinating spiritual life. How could one man, one deeply spiritual man, serve as both a traditional Oglala Lakota medicine man and a Roman Catholic catechist and mystic? How did these two spiritual and cultural identities enrich his prayer life? How did his commitment to God, understood through his Lakota and Catholic communities, shape his understanding of how to be in the world? To fully understand the depth of Black Elk's life-long spiritual quest requires a deep appreciation of his life story. He witnessed devastation on the battlefields of Little Bighorn and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, but also extravagance while performing for Queen Victoria as a member of "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West Show. Widowed by his first wife, he remarried and raised eight children. Black Elk's spiritual visions granted him wisdom and healing insight beginning in his childhood, but he grew progressively physically blind in his adult years. These stories, and countless more, offer insight into this extraordinary man whose cause for canonization is now underway at the Vatican.

No person has worked more effectively toward the abolition of the death penalty in the United States than Helen Prejean, CSJ. Her best-selling book Dead Man Walking, and the hit Hollywood film adaptation in which she was played by Susan Sarandon, was a catalyst for drawing national attention to the issue. In the years since then, her continuing and often controversial work with death-row inmates has kept the issue near the forefront of national debate. She has confronted lawyers and judges, politicians and the media, to expose the indignity and injustice of the death penalty and inhumane prison conditions. In Helen Prejean: Death Row's Nun, Joyce Duriga explores Sister Helen's life growing up in upper-middle-class Louisiana, her growing awareness of the injustice of the death penalty, and its disproportionate targeting of the poor and minorities, and her introduction to death-row inmates Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. Through this book, readers will witness her life's work with victims and their families, and see how she came to understand her role in prison ministry, not only as an activist but as a champion fighting for hope and restorative justice for those facing the death penalty.

Bill Gates has called Paul Farmer one of the most amazing people he has ever met. CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says that "if pure altruism exists in humans, it probably looks a lot like Dr. Paul Farmer." In Paul Farmer, Servant to the Poor, Jennie Weiss Block introduces readers to this physician and medical anthropologist of international stature whose Catholic faith has driven him to work untiringly to make a preferential option for the poor in health care. Farmer, with his colleagues at Harvard University and Partners in Health, have been instrumental in bringing the fruits of modern medicine to millions of the poorest people in the world, in places like Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Russia, Malawi, and West Africa during the recent Ebola crisis. Challenging the conventional wisdom of global health experts, Dr. Farmer has shown it is possible to deliver high-quality medical care on a large scale in settings of great poverty and to build communities around the globe where good health and hope prevail.

As a priest, archbishop, and president of the US bishops' conference, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin lived a ministry marked by thoughtfulness, compassion, and conviction. Relying on interviews with the cardinal's assistants, friends, and family members, as well as on some previously unavailable archival material, Steven P. Millies explores Bernardin's controversial "seamless garment" approach to life issues, his founding of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, the disturbing abuse allegations against him that were later recanted, and his experience of cancer that prompted him to write the bestselling book The Gift of Peace and that ultimately took his life. Millies offers a fresh new portrait of one of the most remarkable Catholic leaders of the twentieth century.

Flannery O'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith tells the remarkable story of the gifted young woman who set out from her native Georgia to develop her talents as a writer and eventually succeeded in becoming one of the most accomplished fiction writers of the twentieth century. Struck with a fatal disease just as her career was blooming, O'Connor was forced to return to her rural home and to live an isolated life, far from the literary world she longed to be a part of. In this insightful new biography, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell depicts O'Connor's passionate devotion to her vocation, despite her crippling illness, the rich interior life she lived through her reading and correspondence, and the development of her deep and abiding faith in the face of her own impending mortality. She also explores some of O'Connor's most beloved stories, detailing the ways in which her fiction served as a means for her to express her own doubts and limitations, along with the challenges and consolations of living a faithful life. O'Donnell's biography recounts the poignant story of America's preeminent Catholic writer and offers the reader a guide to her novels and stories so deeply informed by her Catholic faith. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.

With every passing year since her death in 1990, more people are recognizing Sister Thea Bowman as one of the most inspiring figures in American Catholic history. This granddaughter of slaves became Catholic on her own initiative at the age of nine. As a Franciscan sister, she lived a wide-ranging ministry of joy, music, and justice. Now Father Maurice Nutt offers a new biography of Sister Thea that introduces her and sheds new light on who she was. Drawing on careful research and the insights of people who were close to her, Nutt explores her personality, her passion, her mission, and her prayer. He captures Thea Bowman as she was: an unapologetically African American woman, a religious sister who deeply loved God and the people to whom she ministered through teaching, preaching, and singing, and who embraced the blessing of her ancestry, the wisdom of the "old folks," and a passion for justice and equality for all God's children.

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe's 62 years of life provide a powerful testament to God's presence, love, and hope amidst unimaginable violence. Throughout these many years, her native Uganda and southern Sudan (now South Sudan) have suffered the devastating effects of war and military clashes. Children, as the most vulnerable population, have suffered the most-being orphaned, kidnapped, forced to become child soldiers and sex-slaves. In Rosemary Nyirumbe: Sewing Hope in Uganda, María Ruiz Scaperlanda brings to light Sister Rosemary's vocation of loving presence to these youth in the midst of this cultural and societal obliteration. As a Sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for over 45 years, Sister Rosemary, even at great risk to herself, continues to minister to children enduring the violence around them, teaching practical skills, while helping them to heal, forgive, and hope. Her work taking in girls escaping captivity by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has earned her international recognition. She has been named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World," is the subject of the book Sewing Hope, and an award-winning documentary by the same name narrated by Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker. She received the United Nations Women's Impact Award and has been named a CNN Hero.

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most people, but responded to them in ways that call Catholics to their own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of today. Thomas Merton was the consummate post-modern holy one: flawed, anti-institutional, a voice for the voiceless. But he was also a classical traditionalist: centered, obedient, in search of stability. He was a religious thinker of remarkable insight, a social commentator of courage and conviction, and a writer of startling virtuosity. Michael W. Higgins recounts the life of this insatiable wanderer. He explores the various layers of influence and evolution in Merton's thought and spirituality. This book tells the remarkable story of a life that remains to be understood from its beginnings and long after its premature ending.

Father Augustus Tolton was the first identified black American ordained to the priesthood in the United States. He was born into slavery and escaped to freedom with his mother and siblings under harrowing circumstances. Throughout his life he displayed a great devotion to the Lord and the Catholic faith despite facing racism within the Church at nearly every turn. Still, he felt and preached that the Catholic Church's teaching that all people are children of God regardless of race made it the true church for African Americans in the United States following the Civil War. In Augustus Tolton, Joyce Duriga brings to light his quiet witness as a challenge to prejudices and narrow-mindedness that can keep us insulated from the universal diversity of the kingdom of God.

By any measure, Dorothy Day lived a fascinating life. She was a journalist, activist, single mother, convert, Catholic laywoman, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. A lifelong radical who took the gospels at their word, Dorothy Day lived among the poor as one of them, challenging both church and state to build a better world for all people. Steeped in prayer, the liturgy, and the spiritual life, she was jailed repeatedly for protesting poverty, injustice, and war. Through it all, she created a sense of community and remained down-to-earth and humanly approachable. To have known Dorothy Day was to have experienced not only her charm and humanity, but the purposefulness of her life. In Dorothy Day: Love in Action, Patrick Jordan-who knew her personally-conveys some of the hallmarks of Day's fascinating life and the spirit her adventure inspires.