Msgr. Francis Glenn was Pastor of St. Paul Parish in Butler, PA for a quarter of a century. Msgr. Glenn was a great role model for me on how to be a wise and effective pastor. Over time I learned that he had been the Archivist for the Diocese of Pittsburgh and told me many stories about the Catholic Church in Western Pennsylvania. One day we talked about St. Peter’s Parish in Butler, which was known as the German church because this was where many Catholics from Germany worshiped on Sunday starting in the mid-nineteenth century. The transition to the use of English at St. Peter’s occurred sometime during the First World War. The German immigrants came to the United States because of the civil unrest and lack of opportunity in Germany after the Napoleonic Wars. One of these German couples, Thomas and Josephine Stehle, arrived in Butler in the 1830s. Thomas and Josephine are my great-great grandparents. Msgr. Glenn told me that it was a challenge to find German-speaking priests to minister to the congregation in Butler. At one point the Redemptorist Fathers were stationed at St. Philomena’s church in Pittsburgh took charge of the mission in Butler.

Anne-Thérèse Guérin was born in Etables, France on October 2, 1798. Her father, Laurent Guérin, was an officer in the French navy and was often away from the family for long periods of time. When Anne-Thérèse was fifteen, her father was murdered by bandits whom he encountered on his way home for a family visit. Isabelle Guérin, the mother of Anne-Thérèse, fell into deep depression as a result of the loss of her husband. Anne-Thérèse bore the responsibility of caring for her mother and her young sister as well as the family’s home and garden for the next ten years.

Statuary Hall is a chamber of the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. Of the many men and women honored by the fifty States in Statuary Hall, four of them are Catholic priests. Our saint for this week is one of those four priests represented in Statuary Hall: Saint Damien de Veuster of Molokai. Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium in 1840 to a poor farmer and his wife. At the age of 13, he left school to help his parents on the farm. When he was nineteen, he entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary where he received Damien as his religious name. His older brother, Pamphile, was also a priest in this congregation. The Sacred Hearts Fathers agreed to provide pastoral care to the natives living on the Hawaiian Islands. Let me provide a little background to the pastoral situation the Sacred Hears Fathers were taking on.

We continue this series of columns on American Saints and Blesseds. Our Saint of the day: Saint Katharine Drexel. She was born in Philadelphia. Her father was an international banker and a member of one of the wealthiest families in the United States of America. Katharine had an excellent education through private tutors and traveled widely as a young woman. She learned the hard way that money could not buy safety from pain or death as she nursed her stepmother through a three-year-battle with a terminal illness.

In the liturgical calendar adapted for use in the United States, January 23 has been designated as the optional memorial of Saint Marianne Cope. Barbara Koob was born in Germany in 1838. Before she was two years old her family emigrated to the United States. At some point in time the family name was changed to Cope. Her family settled in Utica, New York where they became members of St. Joseph Parish. Barbara attended the local parish elementary school. After completing the eighth grade Barbara went to work in a textile factory to support her family.

I am continuing a new series of columns devoted to saints who lived and worked in the United States. Today we look at the fourth bishop of Philadelphia: St. John Neumann whose feast day is January 5. John Nepomucene Neumann was born in 1811 in the Czech Republic. John undertook seminary studies for the priesthood in Prague. But when it came time for his ordination, the bishop was ill. Ordinations were cancelled that year. When John was told that they did not need any more priests in his home diocese, he departed for New York where Bishop John Dubois accepted him as a candidate for the priesthood and ordained him in 1836. John was a gifted linguist and worked well with the immigrant populations. After working with German immigrants in the Rochester area, John joined the newly arrived Redemptorist missionary order whose novitiate was in Pittsburgh in 1840. Several years after joining the Redemptorists he became the Provincial Superior for North America. In 1848, Neumann became a naturalized American citizen. In 1851, when he was forty-one, John Neumann became the fourth bishop of Philadelphia.

Today we begin a series of columns on American Saints and Blesseds. To be more specific, I mean those individuals who have been canonized or beatified and who lived and work in the United States of America. Some were born here. Others came to this country as children or adults. The saint we are looking at today is St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821).

Last week I concluded the series of columns that I had written on the Doctors of the Church. This week I would like to begin a new series of American Saints and Blesseds. This series will be devoted to those men and women who were either born in what is now the United States or were immigrants to our country and did missionary work here. First, let’s cover some useful background when talking about saints and blessed. For this I am referring to an entry on “Saints” that can be found on the USCCB website.

Today we are discussing St. Thérèse of Lisieux, chronologically the last of the thirty-seven men and women who have been named Doctors of the Church. She was born on January 2, 1873, the last daughter of Louis and Zélie Martin, exemplary parents who were canonized together by Pope Francis on October 18, 2015. Louis and Zélie had nine children, four of whom died as babies or small children. The five daughters who remained all became religious. Four of them became Discalced Carmelites and one became a Visitandine.

In July of 1723, Alphonsus Ligouri, a rising star on the legal scene at Naples, was arguing a case on behalf of Neapolitan nobleman, Filippo Orsini. Orsini was suing the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Cosimo III) over the rights to a rich estate of land. Even though Alphonsus had prepared meticulously and was sure that he would win the court case, he overlooked a technicality. To complicate matters Alphonsus was fighting against powerful political forces. The argument presented by Alphonsus was brusquely dismissed. Momentarily stunned and speechless, Alphonsus eventually exclaimed, “O world, I recognize you now! Goodbye to courtrooms” and stormed out of the chambers. Three months later, over the strenuous objections of his father, he received tonsure and began studies for the priesthood. As scholars have studied the life of Alphonsus, they have determined that he had been pondering a religious vocation for some time. But the courtroom incident gave the dramatic push that Alphonsus needed to begin a long and distinguished career of priestly service.

St. Francis de Sales was born in 1567 in a French border region. He was the son of the Lord of Boisy, an ancient and noble family of Savoy. His life straddled the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He received a very careful education studying theology in Paris and jurisprudence in Padua (as per his father’s wishes) and received degrees in both civil and canon law. His father wanted him to be a soldier or a lawyer. Francis, however, had his heart set on being a priest. In time he was to get his father’s assent to be ordained a priest, which occurred on December 18, 1593. Soon after his ordination to the priesthood, he volunteered for the dangerous mission of serving in the region around Lake Geneva, a bastion of Calvinism. For years he walked from town to town on foot, enduring poverty and harsh winters, and many times barely escaping attempts on his life. In his missionary outreach Francis chose an approach that was unusual for the times. Rather than simply denouncing Calvinism Francis proclaimed the positive message of the Gospel. This helped to overcome many of the negative stereotypes people in that region held about Catholicism. Hundreds of families were reconciled with the Catholic faith as a result of his mission.

St. Lawrence of Brindisi is perhaps the only Doctor of the Church to have led an army to battle. The army of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II under the command of archduke Matthias confronted a much larger Turkish force in the city of Szekesfehervar located in central Hungary on October 9, 1601. The Capuchin friar Lawrence of Brindisi was serving as a chaplain for archduke Matthias and his army. Friar Lawrence had been sent by Pope Clement VIII to spread the Capuchin reform of the Franciscan order and to encourage the faithful in Austria and Bohemia to hold true to their Catholic faith. Before the battle began, Friar Lawrence addressed the troops. He encouraged them to fight boldly and promised them victory as he shouted: “Forward! Victory is ours.” Then riding his horse and waving his crucifix he led them against the Turks. Even though he was exposed to every danger he was unharmed by it all. The Christian army triumphed, and Friar Lawrence was hailed as a hero. His crucifix was later treated as a relic.

On March 3, 1599, Pope Clement VIII advanced Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit priest and theologian, to the College of Cardinals. Jesuits usually shun opportunities for advancement in the Church. Robert even tried to protest during the ceremonies. But Pope Clement VIII ordered him to be silent and to accept his new responsibilities. In honoring Robert Bellarmine in this manner, Pope Clement VIII stated that “We elect this man because the Church of God has not his equal in learning.” Pope Clement was not only exercising good judgement with his decision, but he was also offering criticism of his predecessor, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90). The death of Pope Sixtus V prevented him from putting Robert Bellarmine’s greatest work, the Disputations about the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of the Age on the “Index of Forbidden Books.” In this work Robert had argued that the papacy had only indirect power in temporal affairs. This was a position that made Pope Sixtus V quite angry.

Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 in a small village near Ávila in what is now Spain to Gonzalo de Yepes, an impoverished noblewoman and Catalina Alvarez, a humble silk worker. Gonzalo was disinherited by his family for marrying (at least in the mind of his family) beneath his station in life. Gonzalo also died when John was young. That made life increasingly difficult for Catalina and her two sons Juan and Francisco. When John was nine, the family moved to Medina del Campo, near Valladolid. A few years later John studied at a recently founded Jesuit College at Medina del Campo. When he finished the course of studies, he felt a call to religious life and entered the Carmelites in 1563 where he received as a religious name Juan de Santo Matía.

Peter Kanis—Canisius is the Latin form of his surname—was born on May 8, 1521, in Nijmegen, Holland. His father was the burgomeister, or chief magistrate or executive of the town. While he was a student at the University of Cologne, he would regularly visit the Carthusian monks in that city, and he would associate with other devout men who cultivated the spirituality of the so-called devotio moderna (modern devotion). This was a movement of religious reform calling for apostolic renewal through the rediscovery of pious practices such as humility, obedience, simplicity of life that had begun in the late fourteenth century and came to an end during the Protestant Reformation.

Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905 and died on October 5, 1938. She was born in what is now west-central Poland. After working as a housekeeper in three cities, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925 where she received the name Sister Maria Faustina.

Happy Easter to all who are at Mass on this most glorious Easter day. I want to give a special word of welcome to our visitors who are joining us for Mass today. I hope that you feel very welcome, for indeed you are! I am going to pause this week from my current series of writing about the Doctors of the Church. I will continue the series next week. I want to focus on this very great day in our liturgical calendar. Often on Easter when I greet people after the Masses, people stop and ask me questions. Let me mention some questions that I have been asked over the years on Easter Sunday and then answer the questions.

In about 1524 Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada and her older brother secretly left their home in Avila, Spain to travel, “begging bread for the love of God,” to travel to Muslim lands in North Africa to offer themselves for martyrdom. At a bridge leading out of the city their uncle met them and marched them back home.

Today we encounter the first Doctor of the Church to live in the modern era: St. John of Ávila (1499 or 1500-1569), who lived during the first half of the sixteenth century. He was born on January 6, 1499 [or 1500] in Almodóvar del Campo (Ciudad Real, in the Archdiocese of Toledo). He was the only son of devout Catholic parents: Alonso Ávila and Catalina Gijón. When John was fourteen, he went to the University of Salamanca to study law. John had a profound conversion during his fourth term of studies at the university. At the end of that term he returned home to devote himself to prayer and meditation.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) lived in a very troubled time in the history of the Church as well as in Italy and the whole of Europe. When I consider her impact on the times in which she lived, I am reminded that even in turbulent times the Lord brings forth saints who give a jolt to minds and hearts that often provoke conversion and renewal. This gives me hope for our contemporary situation.