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Today’s column is devoted to Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich (1901-1927). Teresa Demjanovich was born to a Ruthenian family who had emigrated to New Jersey. She was a very intelligent young woman who graduated from high school at the age of 15. Although she wished to enter religious life, she delayed this to take care of her parents who were both terminally ill.

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France in 1769, in a well-to-do family. From her father she learned political skills and from her mother she learned a love for the poor. When she was nineteen, she entered the Visitation Order without asking her parents and remained in the convent despite parental opposition. While she was still a novice the French Revolution began. Convents, particularly of cloistered communities like the Visitation nuns, were suppressed. Even though she was forced to leave the convent, she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a school for street urchins, and risked her life helping priests in the underground.

When I went on a pilgrimage to France in 2008, one of the places we visited was the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse in Lisieux, France. One of the surprises of that visit to Lisieux was to see the statue there that had been donated by the Bishops of the United States. It was of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini with the inscription on the statue as our first citizen saint. Here is the remarkable story of that valiant woman of God, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.

October 19th is the day when the Church in the United States celebrates the North American Martyrs. These eight Jesuit martyrs who were killed in North America between 1642 and 1649 were canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930. I want to concentrate on three of these Jesuit martyrs as they were killed in what is now New York State: Saint Isacc Jogues, Saint Jean de Lalande and Saint René Goupil.

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.