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New book profiles 18 Catholics whose work transformed the lives of others, advancing civil and human rights.

Roxanne King Commentaries September 10, 2024

A former slave who became known as Denver’s “Angel of Charity” and “Apostle of the Sacred Heart.” A Native American medicine man who became a zealous Catholic catechist among his people. An Austrian farmer who conscientiously refused to fight for Hitler and was beheaded.

Julia Greeley, Nicholas Black Elk and Franz Jägerstätter are three of the inspiring men and women featured in Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights: 1800s to the Present released Sept. 9 by Ignatius Press.

The book is a collaborative effort by Matthew Daniels and me. Daniels, a professor at South Carolina’s Anderson University, commissioned it as a Catholic supplement to a civil-rights curriculum he owns based on the nonviolent philosophy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The work evolved to inform a general audience.

“Faith and conscience are central to civil rights,” Daniels told the Register. “The cause of human rights is rooted in faith. Civil rights came out of the Church: the principles and methods rooted in the Gospel, such as nonviolence. The goal of the curriculum is to reclaim that story: the authentic rights story rooted in higher law.”

Catholic Heroes is a quick, easy read of 16 profiles that include lay and religious, canonized saints and ordinary car mechanics, who courageously defied odds to advance civil and human rights in their unique ways in different eras, ranging from the birth of the United States to World War II Germany to the current Latin American immigration crisis.

Unique to the work is that each section is themed on a pillar of Catholic social teaching — freedom, perseverance, hope, justice and conscience — and includes short quotes from Church documents defining those pillars. Impelled by their faith, the 18 people profiled exemplify these pillars — they include Servant of God Dorothy Day, Venerable Augustus Tolton, St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. óscar Romero. Through their work, they transformed lives and paved the way for a more equitable society.

“The stories in the book show the humanity of the Catholic heroes’ efforts and offer inspiration — that we are also capable of doing great things for the Kingdom,” Daniels said.

Servant of God Julia Greeley is likely not well known outside of Denver, which became her adopted home when she arrived as a free woman from Missouri about 1878. She bore the mark of a slave master’s whip in a blinded eye but refused to hate.

She was a Catholic convert who, through faith, rose above the racism and injustice she experienced, answering those wrongs with heroic acts of charity despite her own poverty. Her beneficence brought comfort and hope.

With great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Julia made a 22-mile pilgrimage each first Friday of the month to deliver prayer pamphlets to firemen because their jobs were dangerous and she wanted them to be prepared for death. Unable to read, she knew the materials encouraged faith and called them “tickets to heaven.”

“Old Julia” was so beloved that when she died in 1918, people from all walks of life filed past her body for five hours as it lay in state to pay their respects. She is now in the first step toward canonization.

Nicholas Black Elk became famous through a book written about him and his boyhood vision that led to his vocation as a spiritual healer. Black Elk Speaks ends just after the tragic 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre with a lament. But the book only includes his youth and young adulthood. Left out, to Black Elk’s dismay, was that he was a Catholic convert who served as a catechist for decades.

He was known among his people for bringing to them the good news about Jesus, whom the Lakota call Wanikiya, “He who makes live.” Black Elk lived and shared a vibrant life of hope and inspired hundreds to “walk the good red road.” His ministry, author Damian Costello notes, radiated Wanikiya’s “healing love” to his devasted people. Now, this former medicine man is also a “Servant of God.”

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter calmly walked to the guillotine in Berlin-Brandenburg prison on Aug. 9, 1943. He was swiftly beheaded by German military as an enemy of the state for refusing to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler and fight what Franz asserted was an “unjust war.”

He was 36, happily married and the proud father of four daughters. Family, friends, his pastor and bishop had all told Franz to obey the Third Reich to save himself. But his conscience would not permit that. On June 1, 2007, the Catholic Church declared him a martyr. Four months later, he was declared “Blessed.” His 94-year-old wife and his four daughters attended his beatification.

The lives of these faithful Catholics show how the teachings of Christ, through his Church, can drive ordinary believers to do extraordinary deeds. They bear witness that through an authentic Christian, “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). May they inspire readers to be the light in this world God desires and to realize their own call to holiness.