Biographies/Autobiographies
Alessandro's story has never been fully told "€" until now. Alessandro Serenelli: A Story of Forgiveness is a captivating story of mercy and forgiveness, both given and accepted. Learn about Alessandro's difficult childhood, the murder of Maria Goretti, his prison sentence, his conversion as a result of Maria's intercession, and the final years of his life with a Capuchin community. Through his life story, you'll gain a new understanding of the nature of repentance and of God's patience and unfailing love.
His name was Segatashya. He was a shepherd born into a penniless and illiterate pagan family in the most remote region of Rwanda. He never attended school, never saw a bible, and never set foot in a church. Then one summer day in 1982 while the 15-year-old was resting beneath a shade tree, Jesus Christ paid him a visit. Jesus asked the startled young man if he'd be willing to go on a mission to remind mankind how to live a life that leads to heaven. Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions-and all the questions of those he met on his travels-about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy's terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become one of the most miraculous journeys in modern history. Although he was often accused of being a charlatan and beaten as a result, Segatashya's innocent heart and powerful spiritual wisdom quickly won over even the most cynical of critics. Soon, this teenage boy who had never learned to read or write was discussing theology with leading biblical scholars and advising pastors and priests of all denominations. He became so famous in Rwanda that the Catholic Church investigated his story. The doctors and psychiatrists who examined Segatashya all agreed that they were witnessing a miracle. His words and simple truths converted thousands of hearts and souls wherever he went. Before his death during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Segatashya continued his travels and conversations with Jesus for eight years, asking Him what we all want to know: - Why were we created?
- Why must we suffer?
- Why do bad things happen to good people?
- When will the world end?
- Is there life after death?
- How do we get to Heaven? The answers to these and many other momentous, life-changing questions are revealed in this riveting book, which is the first full account of Segatashya's remarkable life story. Written with grace, passion, and loving humor by Immaculée Ilibagiza, Segatashya's close friend and a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust herself, this truly inspirational work is certain to move you in profound ways. No matter what your faith or religious beliefs, Segatashya's words will bring you comfort and joy, and prepare your heart for this life . . . and for life everlasting.
"Listen and attend with the ear of your heart." - Saint Benedict.
Dolores Hart stunned Hollywood in 1963, when after ten highly successful feature films, she chose to enter a contemplative monastery. Now, fifty years later, Mother Dolores gives this fascinating account of her life, with co-author and life-long friend, Richard DeNeut.
Dolores was a bright and beautiful college student when she made her film debut with Elvis Presley in Paramount's 1957 Loving You. She acted in nine more movies with other big stars such as Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quinn and Myrna Loy. She also gave a Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway play The Pleasure of His Company and appeared in television shows, including The Virginian and Playhouse 90. An important chapter in her life occurred while playing Saint Clare in the movie Francis of Assisi, which was filmed on location in Italy.
Born Dolores Hicks to a complicated and colorful Chicago family, Mother Dolores has travelled a charmed yet challenging road in her journey toward God, serenity and, yes, love. She entered the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, at the peak of her career, not in order to leave the glamorous world of acting she had dreamed of since childhood, but in order to answer a mysterious call she heard with the "ear of the heart." While contracted for another film and engaged to be married, she abandoned everything to become a bride of Christ.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers tells the gripping story of Augustus Tolton, who valiantly overcame a series of seemingly insurmountable challenges - birth into slavery, his father's death, abject poverty, and even being denied acceptance by every Catholic seminary in America - to become the first black American priest.
Part thriller, as when Moynihan details his efforts to reach Vigano and makes his way to their meeting, and part personal memoir as both men reflect on their lives, families, and the state of the Church in the world, Finding Vigano has something for everyone. Readers familiar with the Vigano saga will appreciate the insights into the man provided through the interviews, while those unfamiliar with the drama of the Testimony will, after reading, have a better understanding of the key issues and players involved.
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin
Paul Wilkes has been a writer/journalist, a TV producer, a monastic, a hedonist, a friend of the famous, a family man, and ultimately a true prodigal son. With In Due Season, Wilkes, one of America's most respected writers on religious belief and spirituality, details his search for God--from his working class upbringing in Cleveland to giving up everything he owned and living with the poor to his hedonistic life among the rich and famous. Wilkes's inspiring life story is one of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph, of a faith in God, battered and tried in the crucible of his experience.
Paul Wilkes wanted to be like social justice advocate Dorothy Day, and spend his life with the poor. He wanted to be like Thomas Merton, and spend his life behind monastery walls in prayer. He failed on both accounts. He only became himself.
One of America's most respected writers on religious belief and spirituality, Paul Wilkes's search for God begins in a poor, working class family in Cleveland and winds through lonely nights in a factory, working his way through college; a surprising confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis; a torrid romance on the Indian Ocean; acceptance into an Ivy League school; and into the perfect marriage, which would fail.
A man who seemingly had everything, one day he took scripture literally and gave up everything he owned to live with the poor. But then, in a dizzying turnabout, he became a person he eventually could no longer recognize in the mirror. He spent his summers in the Hamptons and lived the life of the man about town--single, facile, popular, hollow. He knew Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and Kurt Vonnegut, but not himself. He sat at the feet of the Dalai Lama. He was an avowed hedonist. He lived as a hermit at a Trappist monastery. He found true love and ran from it. He was a true son of the Church and a sinner beyond anything he might have imagined.
Paul Wilkes' life is one of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph, with a faith in God battered and tried in the crucible of his life.
Literary Converts is a biographical exploration into the spiritual lives of some of the greatest writers in the English language: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, T.S. Eliot and J.R.R. Tolkien. The role of George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in intensifying the religious debate despite not being converts themselves is also considered.
Many will be intrigued to know more about what inspired their literary heroes; others will find the association of such names with Christian belief surprising or even controversial. Whatever viewpoint we may have, Literary Converts touches on some of the most important questions of the twentieth century, making it a fascinating read.
Emil Kapaun--priest, soldier and Korean War hero--was a rare man. He was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, and is also being considered by the Vatican for canonization as a saint.
Just as remarkable are the many non-Catholic witnesses who attest to Father Kapaun's heroism: the Protestants, Jews and Muslims who either served with the military chaplain in the thick of battle or endured with him the incredibly brutal conditions of a prisoner of war camp. These Korean War veterans, no matter their religion, agree that Father Kapaun did more to save lives and maintain morale than any other man they know. Then there are the alleged miracles--the recent healings attributed to Father Kapaun's intercession that defy scientific explanation. Under investigation by the Vatican as a necessary step in the process of canonization, these cures witnessed by non-Catholic doctors are also covered in this book. In tracking down the story of Father Kapaun for the Wichita Eagle, Wenzl and Heying uncovered a paradox. Kapaun's ordinary background as the son of Czech immigrant farmers in Kansas sowed the seeds of his greatness. His faith, generosity and grit began with his family's humility, thrift and hard work.
PRO-LIFE CHAMPION is the untold story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly, who, almost single-handedly, reclaimed the pro-life movement from a course of violence by setting it on a path to prayerful, non-confrontational witness to the sacredness of human life. In the course of rescuing the movement from an untimely death at the hands of pro-choice politicians, he has counseled thousands of distraught women on the street and trained hundreds of like-minded individuals to do the same, thereby saving an estimated hundred thousand lives. As for the salvivic effect of his intervention on the souls of countless parents bent on destroying God's greatest gift, it is beyond telling. The Helpers of God's Precious Infants, which he founded in 1991, has chapters in forty-five American states, as well as thirty foreign countries. This is the story of a Latin teacher and prep school principal who sacrificed an academic career in order to answer God's call, a man who risked his life in order to awaken people to the devastating effect of destroying innocent human beings. With Scripture as his sword -- "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you" (God to Jeremiah) and Isaiah's rhetorical question, "Can a mother be without tenderness for the child of her womb?" -- he organized police-protected prayer vigils led by Catholic cardinals with up to 2500 participants at a time. He has been on the receiving end of rotten eggs, vitriolic invective, and a $117 million law suit. Six times arrested (before opting for non-violence), he has likewise been dragged into court scores of times without ever losing his sense of humor. One of the organizers of the first March for Life in Washington, D.C., he counts among his students Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, and David Bereit, founder of 40 Days for Life. Frederick Marks, who holds a Ph.D. degree in history from the University of Michigan, has written an account of the life of Msgr. Reilly that is both gripping and scholarly, based, as it is, on seventy hours of interview time with its subject. This is more than a biography. It sets the work of a distinguished prayer warrior against the broader backdrop of the pro-life movement in general, taking the reader all the way from Colorado's decision to become the first state to legalize abortion down to the present.
Republished for a new century and featuring an afterword by Father James Martin, SJ, the classic memoir of an American-born Jesuit priest imprisoned for fifteen years in a Soviet gulag during the height of the Cold War--a poignant and spiritually uplifting story of extraordinary faith and fortitude as indelible as Unbroken. Foreword by Daniel L. Flaherty.
While ministering in Eastern Europe during World War II, Polish-American priest Walter Ciszek, S.J., was arrested by the NKVD, the Russian secret police, shortly after the war ended. Accused of being an American spy and charged with agitation with intent to subvert, he was held in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison for five years. The Catholic priest was then sentenced without trial to ten more years of hard labor and transported to Siberia, where he would become a prisoner within the forced labor camp system made famous in Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Prize--winning book The Gulag Archipelago.
In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own resurrection--his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.
Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him.