Servants of God

The first step to sainthood is to be declared “A Servant of God.” This title is for people who are being investigated on how they led their lives and the good works that they did. They are posthumously declared heroic in virtues as they are being researched. The next steps are being declared Venerable, Beatification and then Canonization to sainthood. The following is a list of Americans who are on the way to becoming saints.

Felix de Andreis – an Italian-born Vincentian priest and pioneer in the Missouri territory in the nineteenth century.

Mary Magdalen Bentivoglio – the daughter of an Italian Count, who became a nun and was sent to the US to establish three monastic communities in the nineteenth century.

Black Elk – his name was Heȟáka Sápa, a Lakota medicine man who became a Catholic and a catechist.

Thea Bowman – a black Catholic nun, teacher, musician and scholar who served the African American community in Mississippi, Wisconsin and Louisiana.

Simon Bruté – a French-born missionary who became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes in Indiana in the nineteenth century.

Vincent R. Capodanno – a priest from Staten Island NY serving in Vietnam who gave up his life saving another Marine.

Walter Ciszek – a priest from Pennsylvania who went to Russia to serve Catholics and spent twenty years in prison for this.

Terence Cooke – a New York native who became a Cardinal and the Archbishop of New York Diocese.

Dorothy Day – an American journalist with a bohemian youth, who was a social activist and an anarchist. A convert, she was part of the Catholic Worker Movement and co-founder of the newspaper, the Catholic Worker.

Joseph Dutton –  a Civil War veteran and Union Army lieutenant who became a Catholic. He  went to Hawaii to assist Father Damien to work with the people with leprosy and stayed there for the rest of his life, becoming a Brother and founding the Baldwin Home for men and boys.

Cora Evans – a wife and mother, formerly a Mormon, who converted and became a mystic, with visions of Christ and the Blessed Mother.

Edward J. Flanagan – an Irish-born priest who went to Nebraska, serving for forty years, including founding Boys Town, an orphanage and educational complex for troubled youth.

Theodore Foley – a priest and Superior General of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus also known as the Passionists.

Francis Xavier Ford – a bishop and Maryknoll missionary in China, tortured and killed by the Communist Chinese in 1952.

Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin – a prince from Russia in the nineteenth century who converted and became a priest, serving in Pennsylvania and is known as “The Apostle of the Alleghenies.”

Louis de Goesbriand – a French-born priest who became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Burlington in Vermont in the nineteenth century.

Julia Greeley – an African American philanthropist and Catholic convert who was a slave. She is known as Denver’s “Angel of Charity” because she helped many poor families.

John Hardon – an American Jesuit, writer, theologian and teacher. He wrote forty books, including the Catholic Catechism, at the request of Pope Paul VI.

Isaac Hecker – a convert and an American priest who founded the Paulist Fathers.

Leo Heinrichs – a Franciscan priest serving at St. Elisabeth of Hungary Church in Denver. He was shot in 1908 by an anarchist while giving out Communion during Mass.

Mychal Judge – a Franciscan friar and priest who was a chaplain to the New York City Fire Department. He was killed serving on 9/11, becoming the first certified fatality.

Emil Kapaun – an Army chaplain priest who served in WW II and Korea and then died in a North Korean prisoner of war camp.

Helio Koaʻeloa – a Hawaiian convert who became a lay missionary known as the “Apostle of Maui.” He converted four thousand natives to the Catholic faith.

Joseph Verbis Lafleur – a priest in the Philippines in World War II who saved many sailors during a bombing, but died in the process.

Mary Elizabeth Lange – a nineteenth century black Catholic nun, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence and was the first African American Superior General. She and two other women started a school in Baltimore, later known as St. Frances Academy, still operating today.

Leonard LaRue – the captain of the SS Meredith Victory, a US Merchant Marine cargo freighter who rescued 14,000 refugees during the Korean War, hours before the Communists were advancing. He later became a Benedictine Monk in New Jersey named Brother Marinus.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop – a widow, mother, writer and social worker who converted and became nun. She founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and is the daughter of the writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne.                                                                                                                                 Mathias Loras – a French-born priest who became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Dubuque in 1837 in the Iowa Territory, comprising of most of Minnesota and North and South Dakota, east of the Missouri River.

Vincent J. McCauley – an Iowa born priest who became the first Bishop of Diocese of Fort Portal in Uganda.

Mary Virginia Merrick – a pioneer in American Catholic social reform. She was paralyzed from a fall but was still able to start the Christ Child Society in 1887 to help needy infants, children and families in Washington DC. Today there are forty five chapters in twenty one states and Washington DC.

Francis J. Parater – a Seminarian from Virginia who died at the age of twenty while studying in Rome in 1920. He was an extremely devout Catholic who wrote the “Act of Oblation.”

Thomas Frederick Price – a priest who was the co-founder of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.

Bernard J. Quinn – a priest from New Jersey who started the first church for black Catholics in Brooklyn in 1922 called St. Peter Claver, which still exists today. He created a children’s choir, which included Lena Horn and Pearl Bailey. In 1928, he established an orphanage for black children in Wading River NY, which was burned down twice by the Ku Klux Klan, but rebuilt.

James Reuter – a Jesuit who moved to the Philippines at the age of twenty two who taught at the Ateneo de Manila University. He was a writer, director and producer for theater, radio, print and film. He stressed the importance of prayers, especially the Rosary.

Charlene Richard – a devout twelve year old girl from Richard, Louisiana who was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia. When she was told of this, she accepted her fate and began praying for others at the hospital to be healed or to convert, which did happen.

Blandina Segale –  Rosa Segale, an Italian-born nun and missionary who served in the US frontier in the nineteenth century.

Julia Teresa Tallon – a nun who founded the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in NY in 1920. This order now operates in Nigeria and the Philippines.

James Anthony Walsh – a priest from Cambridge MA who was the co-founder of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, along with Father Thomas Price.

Paul Wattson – a convert who became a priest. He was an advocated for ecumenism, which is the idea that Christians of all denominations should work together.

George J. Willmann – a priest born in Brooklyn, but spent most of his adult life in the Philippines, where he was granted citizenship. He is known as the “Father of the Knights of Columbus” in the Philippines due to his strengthening the established organization with his leadership.

Rhoda Wise – a stigmatist and mystic from Ohio. She saw many visions of Christ and St. Thérèse of Lisieux in her home. She is also associated with unexplained and sudden healings, including that of Mother Angelica, who had a painful stomach ailment.

We should all strive to be placed on the future list.