Tag: America’s Saints

Jozef De Veuster (1840-1889) was once a gregarious boy who loved life — even a skating champion near his Tremelo, Belgium, hometown. Brought up in a faithful family, he chose to follow in the footsteps of his older brother and entered religious life with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1859. Better known by his religious name, Damien, this saint had the heart of a missionary and was known to pray each day to become one. In 1863, Damien volunteered for Hawaiian missions in place of his sickly priest-brother who was supposed to go. Soon, his zeal for souls earned St. Damien De Veuster the title “apostle to the lepers,” and ultimately led to his canonization by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

Damien arrived in Honolulu in 1864 and was ordained a priest that May. He spent most of the next decade joyously pastoring his flock. Things changed, though, when many islanders — including many from Damien’s own flock — contracted leprosy. Then thought incurable, the ancient disease of leprosy came in a few different forms, the most widespread of which was an ongoing decay of the living human body. The lepers were taken from their homes and assigned as outcasts on the island of Molokai, never seen again by their families. A slow painful death awaited them.

Hawaiian Bishop Louis Maigret strongly desired priests to minister on the island and asked for volunteers since he knew the assignment was equivalent to a death sentence. Damien joyfully and heroically offered himself, leaving for Molokai on May 10, 1873. Since he couldn’t live with the lepers for fear of infection, Damien found shelter under the indigenous pandanus tree for quite a while after his arrival.

For 16 years, Damien ministered as a loving father among those doomed to death. For them, he celebrated the sacraments, gave structure to the community, erected housing facilities and bandaged wounds. And the lepers didn’t just suffer physically. Totally shut off from the world, they awaited their fate, and most saw no point in their suffering. Knowing they came to Molokai to die, the lepers often gave into lewd and sinful behavior. Damien challenged them to be better.

Damien’s primary role was to lead the lepers closer to Christ, and that required giving them hope. In what could be an easily overlooked aspect of his work on Molokai, Damien gave a hopeful new perspective to the “living dead” by digging graves so the dead of Molokai would have a dignified burial. Damien showed the lepers that their bodies deserved dignity, even in death. Their suffering was transformed to have purpose, and this led them along the path of hope in eternal life. By the time Damien died, the majority of the island was Catholic.

In 1888, Damien was joined in his ministry to the lepers by St. Marianne Cope and other Sisters of St. Francis from Syracuse, New York. Eventually canonized herself, Cope cared for Damien when he became a victim of leprosy. He died at age 49 on April 15, 1889, already an internationally acclaimed humanitarian. Originally buried under the tree where he slept his first nights on Molokai, his remains were moved to his homeland in 1936 at the request of the Belgian king.

Damien passed up many opportunities to leave Molokai, ever zealous to win souls for Christ. He wrote to his brother: “People pity me and think me unfortunate, but I think of myself as the happiest of missionaries.” Damien’s sacrifice was an embodiment of Christ’s, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). Of this, Pope St. John Paul II remarked at Damien’s 1995 beatification, “What could he have offered the other lepers, who were condemned to a slow death, if not his own faith and this truth that Christ is Lord and that God is love? He became a leper among the lepers; he became a leper for the lepers. He suffered and died like them, believing that he would rise again in Christ, for Christ is the Lord!”

His feast day is May 10.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

Imagine the suffering of a 29-year-old American widow returning home from Italy, having just buried her husband. Underneath the pain, she couldn’t have guessed this, amazingly, was an integral part of God’s plan. Unknown to her, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was on the path to becoming the first canonized saint born on American soil.

The daughter of a physician, born in New York City in 1774, 3-year-old Elizabeth was acquainted with suffering early with her mother’s death. She married a wealthy importer, William Seton, in 1794, and together they had five children. Stress from the bankruptcy of his business in 1802 worsened William Seton’s existing tuberculosis, and doctors prescribed the Italian climate. Elizabeth didn’t leave his side until his death in an Italian quarantine two days after Christmas in 1803. The couple originally planned to stay with his business partners in Italy, and the young widow enjoyed their hospitality until she could return to America. The Filicchi family home had a private chapel, and there Elizabeth had her first experience of Catholicism. Her life was forever changed.

Fascinated by the Church’s liturgy and the Real Presence, the committed Protestant who went to Italy would soon return to America with a Catholic heart.

Antonio Filicchi helped Seton informally begin her study of the Faith on the voyage to New York.

Seton’s conversion to Catholicism brought about many hardships. Hostility from her family was just the beginning of her sufferings in an anti-Catholic New York City. Seton made the Profession of Faith and received her first holy Communion in March 1805 at St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, the city’s oldest parish. As a victim of prejudice, Seton had trouble finding stable work to provide for her family, and she wrestled about what to do.

God gave the answer when Seton was invited to Maryland by Sulpician Father William DuBourg, who interestingly, as bishop of the Louisiana Territory, worked with St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. In the Catholic-friendly state of Maryland, Seton would establish a school and start a religious order. First teaching in Baltimore for a year, Seton pronounced religious vows in 1809 in the presence America’s first bishop, John Carroll. He gave the foundress of the first religious order established in the United States the title “Mother Seton.” The Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s lived the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity with a few alterations from Carroll to provide for a mother with children to enter the new order.

Establishing a free school for poor girls near Emmitsburg, Maryland, proved to be a daunting, but not impossible task for Mother Seton. With guidance and assistance from Sulpician Father Jean Dubois — the future bishop of New York who ordained St. John Neumann — Seton and her sisters opened St. Joseph’s Free School in 1810, and for this she is remembered as the mother of Catholic education in the United States.

Seton’s trust in God was undying, although it was tested in her final years on the rough Maryland frontier, especially when two daughters died of tuberculosis by 1816. Persevering in the Faith to the end, Seton exhorted those near her deathbed, “Be children of the Church.” She died of tuberculosis at the age of 46 on Jan. 4, 1821. Seton’s spiritual director, Sulpician Father Simon Bruté, himself a candidate for sainthood, memorialized her saying, “O, such a mother! Such faith and love! Such a true spirit of prayer, of true humility, of true self-denial in all, of true charity to all!”

Seton’s life as a loving wife and mother, a faithful teacher and a holy consecrated woman leaves a lasting example. Blessed Pope Paul VI dispensed with the then-necessary fourth miracle required for sainthood and canonized her in the Holy Year of 1975, exhorting Americans, “Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage.”

Her feast day is January 4.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

After nearly 50 religious orders refused Hawaiian King Kalakaua’s invitation to care for the victims of leprosy in his kingdom, St. Marianne Cope said “yes.” The Mother Provincial of the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse, New York, responded wholeheartedly to the request, saying, “I am hungry for the work, and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders. … I am not afraid of any disease, hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned ‘lepers.’”

The family of Barbara Koob — St. Marianne’s birth name — emigrated from Germany for America the year after her birth in 1838, and the immigrant family’s name became Cope. Although she felt called to religious life, Cope began factory work after eighth grade to help her family’s finances when her father became ill. When her father died in 1862, Cope could finally profess vows with the Franciscan Sisters in Syracuse. The newly named Sister Marianne soon began service in German immigrant schools. Her leadership skills were apparent early on, which led her to establishing hospitals in central New York State and a tenure as administrator of St. Joseph Hospital in Syracuse. Cope’s intelligence and interpersonal abilities were apparent, and all who knew her were aware that God was her sole inspiration. She became provincial in 1877.

Already secure in her calling, God called Cope to an even more sacrificial life when she responded favorably to King Kalakaua’s request. It might seem astounding that Cope responded with such ease to something she never imagined in her ministry. However, it’s easily understandable when one is more acquainted with her willingness to serve the Lord. At her beatification in 2005, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins recalled Cope’s dependence on God’s providence, saying, “She left everything and abandoned herself completely to the will of God, to the call of the Church and to the demands of her new brothers and sisters. She put her own health and life at risk.”

Cope and six Franciscan sisters arrived in Hawaii in 1883 and operated hospitals and schools among the leper community. Initially overseeing a hospital for the victims of the disease in Oahu, she later established a home to care for children of leper victims. There, Cope and her sisters cared for the children with a mother’s love. Known for her undying optimism and trust in God’s providence, Cope taught her sisters about their role among the lepers, saying they were “to make life as pleasant and as comfortable as possible for those of our fellow creatures whom God has chosen to afflict with this terrible disease.”

Cope carried on her motherly love of the lepers when she opened a home for women and girls on the island of Molokai. This was a further sacrifice because she knew going to the leper’s island-prison meant essentially she was isolated from the outside world forever. While on Molokai, she developed a close relationship with St. Jozef Damien De Veuster after he was diagnosed with leprosy. Cope lovingly took care of this “apostle to the lepers” in his final days and carried on much of his work among the men’s section of the leper colony after his 1889 death. In 1895, she secured religious brothers to staff it.

Cope led the sisters in the Hawaiian missions until her health began to decline after a life of tireless work as an embodiment of the Good Samaritan. Miraculously, however, she never suffered from leprosy. An 80-year-old Cope died on Molokai on Aug. 9, 1918, originally buried on the island. Never returning to her Syracuse motherhouse in her lifetime, Cope’s relics arrived in Syracuse in 2005 and stayed there until enshrinement in the Honolulu cathedral in 2014. Cope was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said she, “showed the highest love, courage and enthusiasm.”

Her feast day is Jan. 23.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

When a young Bohemian immigrant arrived in New York City on a rainy June day in 1836 his hopes for priesthood were uncertain. Due to an ordination moratorium imposed by his homeland’s government, St. John Neumann could not be ordained at home. Forsaking the comforts of home and family, desiring only his life’s oblation in love and service, Neumann chose to go to America. He read accounts of such storied missionaries as Frederic Baraga — a current candidate for sainthood — and he hoped to follow in their footsteps. Little did the young seminarian know when he set foot on American soil that the path God had in store would result in his canonization as the country’s first male saint.

Born in modern-day Czech Republic in 1811, Neumann grew up in a devout Catholic home, and he had many siblings called to religious vocations.

New York’s bishop John Dubois — the one-time advisor to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton — was impressed quickly by Neumann’s intellect and missionary zeal, ordaining him a priest within his first month in America. Dubois assigned him to regions near Buffalo, New York. While there, Neumann expressed how he faced many hardships and bouts with loneliness. Outwardly, he seemed successful, having established many parishes between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania. But Neumann knew he needed a change. With the help of several priest-advisers, Neumann recognized his need for the support of a religious community to settle his troubled spirit, and he set out for the Redemptorist novitiate in Pittsburgh in 1840.

Neumann proved himself to be a competent and talented administrator, responsible for finishing the building project at St. Philomena’s Church in Pittsburgh, where he ministered alongside a fellow Redemptorist, Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos. Neumann then went on to pastor several other churches, mostly in Maryland. A surprise came when Neumann was appointed the American provincial of his order in 1847, requiring a move to Baltimore, where he became a naturalized American citizen the following year.

Administration of his order brought heavy burdens to Neumann since Redemptorists in America at the time tended to work independently. Neumann was chosen to provide unity among his brothers, and proved to be successful. In Baltimore, he also served as pastor of his order’s St. Alphonsus Church and provided much needed support to many religious orders of women in the area. Neumann’s talents as an administrator would change directions in his life yet again in 1852, when he was named fourth Bishop of Philadelphia by Blessed Pope Pius IX. He was ordained a bishop in Baltimore on his 41st birthday.

Neumann received an overwhelming welcome in his new diocese, and he was immediately recognized as a fatherly, kindly and even saintly pastor. His legacy as bishop includes the establishment of the first American diocesan schools system, the founding of religious orders, starting the Forty Hours Eucharistic devotion, and care for the poor and the city’s booming European immigrants. Neumann led his flock courageously amid the rampant anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration prejudices of the Know-Nothing party.

Neumann excelled in the virtues, most notably humility, without which he said “other virtues could be neither genuine nor permanent.” Neumann desired sanctity, praying at his first Mass, “Dearest God, give me holiness!” No matter what obstacles presented themselves in his life, Neumann responded with a total “yes” to God.

A life of love and service came to a sudden end when, on Jan. 5, 1860, at age 48, Neumann collapsed from a stroke on a Philadelphia street. In 1977, when Neumann became the first (and to date, only) American bishop to be canonized, Pope Paul VI said that for Neumann to accomplish his great works, “love was necessary. And love meant giving; love meant effort; love meant sacrifice. And in his sacrifice, Bishop Neumann’s service was complete.”

His feast day is January 5.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

A young Italian woman seeking a consecrated life simply would not take no for an answer when the Daughters of the Sacred Heart denied her request to enter their order. Despite her frail health — the reason she was denied — the young Maria Francesca Cabrini (1850-1917) would not be deterred from accomplishing the greatness God had in store for her. Motivated by deep faith, Cabrini did something rare for a 24-year-old woman in 19th century Italy: She established her own religious community.

Responding to the needs of her local diocese, Cabrini was asked to manage an all-girls school and boarding house with five companions, all of whom desired religious life.

As they lived and worked together for three years, Cabrini conducted them in a novitiate, resulting in their profession of vows in 1877 and the establishment of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Cabrini composed the rule of the new missionary order and remained superior general until her death.

At her profession of vows, Cabrini adopted Xavier as a secondary name to reflect her devotion to the revered Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier, the great apostle to the Orient. And so, unsurprisingly, Cabrini contemplated bringing her new order to evangelize that region.

During an audience with Pope Leo XIII, she consulted the pontiff about her desire to evangelize the Orient, but she received an unexpected reply: “Not to the East, but to the West.” With that, she prepared to set out for America and begin her order’s mission.

Arriving in New York City in 1889, Cabrini and her sisters were not deterred from getting right to work despite the many difficulties and hardships they faced. Much-needed support from New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan helped Cabrini establish several institutions in a city ridden with poverty, including an essential orphanage and other roles such as teaching parochial catechism lessons.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini constantly sought to give more to God all her life. Cabrini’s missionary zeal could not be contained in New York; she established more than 67 institutions of health care, education and social services throughout North and South America and Europe. Requests for Cabrini and her sisters to establish schools, hospitals and orphanages came from American cities such as Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and she did not disappoint. She always seemed to be on the move. Cabrini was known also as something of a miracle worker in her day, most notably in the case of the portentous discovery of a spring on the site of a summer camp-turned shrine now dedicated to her in Golden, Colorado.

A lifetime of tireless, selfless and often harrowing missionary work took a toll on Cabrini. Hoping for a simpler life and fresh leadership for the order she founded, Cabrini announced retirement plans in 1910, which were quickly dashed when her sisters throughout the world wrote to Rome asking that she be secured as their mother general for life. Pope St. Pius X agreed, the request was granted, and Mother Cabrini, as she still affectionately is known today — a title perhaps more familiar than “saint” — labored in her missions with the love of a mother until her death on Dec. 22, 1917, in the Chicago hospital she founded.

Cabrini’s holiness was revered even during her life, and she was canonized fewer than 30 years after her death by Pope Pius XII in 1946. Known and loved for her amazing missionary work, it is perhaps most timely to meditate on her example of work among immigrants; Cabrini herself became a naturalized American citizen in 1909.

As Pius XII implored at her canonization, may St. Frances Xavier Cabrini beg from God that “public, private and international relations will be regulated not by unbridled desire for selfish advantage, but in justice and equity, restoring mankind the true peace from which the common good flows. Amen.”

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is a patron saint for immigrants, and her feast day is Nov. 13.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic. Follow him on Twitter @HeinleinMichael.