Among the heroes of the Holocaust, the German industrialist Oskar Schindler cuts a curious figure. Not a man of evident faith or even conventional virtue, he was in fact an…

Thérèse Martin, a young French Carmelite, died of tuberculosis on October 1, 1897, at the age of twenty-four, only nine years after entering the convent in Lisieux. Her short life…

The Book of Margery Kempe offers a vivid self-portrait of a remarkable religious seeker from fourteenth-century England. Margery was the wife of a beer brewer, with whom she bore fourteen…

St. Joseph was born to a poor family in the small Italian town of Cupertino. His early life gave no evidence of any special gifts. He was considered slow-witted and…

Sadhu Sundar Singh, who wore the robes of an Indian holy man to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of modern…

What little is known of St. Phoebe and her part in the early Church is derived from her brief mention in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “And I commend…

Maria Micaela Desmaisières was born in Madrid to a noble family. Her mother died when she was a child, and she spent much of her early life in the company…

Gaspar Contarini was born to a noble family in Venice. After considering a religious vocation, he came to believe his calling was to serve Christ while remaining in the secular…

John Courtney Murray was one of the most significant American Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. His writings on pluralism and the “American experiment” helped overcome nativist doubts about the…

Ruth Pfau was born in Leipzig in 1929. After surviving Allied bombing during the war, she escaped East Germany to study medicine in Mainz. Inspired by the example of a…