Unusual or unknown Saints and other holy people

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Do you know some less well known stories that deserve to be shared?
 
The “Mystics of the Church” has a lot of interesting lesser known people on there, including folks on the path to sainthood. I am a big fan of all the mystics from my home state of Ohio, including Rhoda Wise, Sister Mary Ephrem, and Helena Pelczar. I am hoping to visit Helena’s grave soon but it’s in a bad neighborhood where people have been beaten and robbed in the cemetery, so I have to take backup with me. The Ohio mystics are special to me because when I was a child growing up there, my mother had a picture of Our Lady appearing to the children at Fatima in her room and she explained the story to me when I was very little, and told me it happened in Portugal, far away, and I would ask Mom, “Why doesn’t Our Lady appear here?” I used to imagine she could perhaps appear in our backyard, to me. But at the time the Church didn’t talk about apparitions very much, not even the approved ones, so I was quite happy to learn within the last few years that Mary, Jesus, even St. Joseph and St. Therese, had reportedly appeared to or communicated with people right in the state of Ohio and right in our diocese, and that this was considered credible enough for bishops to “approve for faith expression” (the Our Lady of America apparitions to Sr. Mary Ephrem) or to allow a sainthood cause (Rhoda Wise and Helena Pelczar, although Helena’s seems to be pretty dormant at present).

(Continued next post due to length limits)
 
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Others I find interesting include:
  • Adele Brise, the visionary of Our Lady of Good Help, which is the only approved Marian apparition in USA as of now. I wonder why Adele does not seem to have a sainthood cause? She certainly seems to have lived a holy life.
  • Father Willie Doyle, an Irish military chaplain in WWI. He also does not yet have a sainthood cause to my knowledge. I read that the Irish Jesuits only had enough money to push one cause and Father Doyle was one they considered, but they decided to push Blessed John Sullivan instead because he had the stronger cause.
  • Otto Pies, another Jesuit hero of Dachau concentration camp, who I already posted about on here.
  • Elizabeth Kindelmann, the Flame of Love visionary. Again, no cause for her yet, I’m not sure why not given that we have dozens of Flame of Love prayer groups in Philadelphia, Memphis, and other countries.
  • Not a Catholic, but I recently discovered the story of Presbyterian minister Rev. Bob Childress and he’s pretty inspiring. His parents were alcoholics, his mother was mentally ill, he started out as a petty criminal but reformed after seeing a mass murder of a judge and other people by the family of a local man who’d been convicted at a trial. He ended up becoming a minister, building several landmark “stone churches” and bringing a lot of people to Jesus.
If you’re looking for saints, I suggest St. Rafael Arnaiz Baron, whom I just discovered. He was a Spanish Trappist oblate who died at age 27 due to diabetes. His writings are mostly not translated to English but they should be, they seem very nice. Here is one translated segment:


One more - Blessed Daniel Brottier, he has an amazing life story. The page I read called him “Teflon Dan” because he managed to serve in WWI in dangerous positions without getting wounded at all. Guess the Lord had other plans for him.
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/blessed-daniel-brottier/

I’ll be quiet now and let someone else have a turn.
 
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Bearself it’s providential as I was just rereading a little book I have about Fr. Willie Doyle!
 
I think of Fr. Willie Doyle every time I eat butter, especially Irish butter, because of his big struggle with whether to leave the butter off his bread for penance or just break down and eat it. Apparently St. Josemaria Escriva used Fr. Doyle’s butter struggle as some kind of lesson in his own writing or preaching.
 
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