Who is the Catholic that influenced you the most?

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My parents,our wonderful parish priest 🙂 The deminutive little nun who travelled out an hour to give instruction
and all the visiting priests passing through who said mass at my parents home.
 
Pope John Paul II, for when he stood on the balcony and said '“The cardinals have called a new bishop of Rome. They have called him from a distant country, distant but close”…and that smile came across his face, I knew, even though I was only going on six, that this was a special man and I remember I had this feeling of being safe. As i grew older and Pope John Paul II grew in his Pontificate, truly showing by his words,his actions and travelling the world that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ, bringing so many back to the church as well as new converts. When this courageous man was shot, the first one he called out for was our and his Beloved Mother Mary… I had the privilege of seeing Pope John Paul II twice when he came to Philadelphia and said Mass. Little did I know then that I would live to see this man who stepped out on that balcony, and gave that smile to the whole world become St. John Paul II. Now he is in heaven watching over us and praying for us.
Thank you St. John Paul . 🦋🦋🦋.
 
Mother, grandmother, Sister Marietta Therese, Sister Mary Daniel, Aunt Sue, Saint Augustine, Chesterton, Uncle Alvin, Dr. Kevin Hughes (in college), Fr. Caponi, Ms. McKenna, Fr. Paul,
 
I love this question! But I couldn’t possibly narrow it down to one!

When I was a child, they were my parents, the teacher who prepared me for the sacraments, and a parish priest. Also my grandparents. Later, a friend in the seminary, my brother, and various saints. Today, I’d say Father Anthony and Father Joseph.

God has always sent me the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons 🙂
 
My dad’s dad. During summers and school breaks, I would work with him(he always had some sort of business he ran such as lawn care or costruction) and his main rule was that I had to go to daily mass to work with him. Of course I was not “on the clock” during mass because he wasn’t “gonna pay [me] to get right with Jesus”. Also, he would not let me work for the whole if he found out I skipped mass on Sunday. He always carried a rosary and I saw him praying the rosary while driving the tractor he used to cut grass. He may have had numerous other faults, but he showed me that everyone can overcome their sins if they truly try.

He passed away during the years I was away from the church, but he has become an inspiration to how I can be now that I have returned home.
 
Interestingly enough, my dad, who was not Catholic, never saw the inside of a church when I was a kid, but loved my Catholic mother who insisted on her 4 kids being Catholic. When my mom was sick when I was a kid, rather than saying we didn’t have to go to Sunday Mass, my dad got up, got us all dressed, and took us to Mass, dropping us off with the ushers and asking them to watch over us while he stayed in the car or ran an errand. It was his love for my mom and the respect he had for her and he determination to raise us right, that always impressed me. I even got sent to the principal’s office for defending my dad when some nun told us that only Catholics would go to heaven. You should have heard the eight year old Atticus Finch of Mt. Carmel grade school defend his dad.
BTW. In his sixties, Dad converted after 40 years of exposure to his wife and kids’ Catholic ways. Spent his last six years helping out in old age homes and hospitals just as a volunteer doing what he saw as his Catholic responsibility to those who had less than he did.
 
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@joeybaggz Thank you for sharing that story. Your father sounds like an amazing person.
 
My godparents are the most influential Catholics in my life, and I’m so incredibly blessed to have their examples in my life. While I’m talking about them, I would ask that you pray for them both as they discern their vocations: my godfather as a husband, and my godmother as a nun.

In terms of the Saints, I look up the most to Sts. Joan of Arc and Bernard of Clairvaux. They’re both wonderful people (besides the fact they’re Saints!), and have qualities I hope to emulate.

EDIT: Grammar fail!
 
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Scott Hahn. I became aware of him very early in my reversion- I think it took me less than a month to hear of him. It was my first year in college, in my second semester English class, and I was told I would have to write a several page essay on a topic of my choosing. I wanted to do something religious, and considered writing about the priesthood before seeing Scott Hahn’s book The Lamb’s Supper on Amazon. I ended up buying it from a bookstore a few minutes away from campus and mostly skimmed it at first, but I ultimately wrote about the Real Presence. After submitting my paper, I began to read the entire book. A year later, I had most of his books in my personal library.

If it weren’t for him, I might not be the orthodox Catholic that I am. I may have ended up baptist or methodist with how little guidance I had in my faith journey.
 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Blessed Virgin, most of all!
 
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Mom, mainly.
But JPII’s first words, Be Not Afraid, somehow resonated inside me in a strongly spiritual way. I can’t explain it, but it was a spiritual jolt of some type that impelled me on the way to really embracing an adult faith.
Also, experience in Europe as a young adult, seeing an openly Catholic country with Marian shrines on the streets, crucifixes in public stores and government offices, baroque churches. I was very impressed by the beauty and strangeness of being surrounded by the faith in public life as well as private.
 
The Catholic friends in High school that led me to investigate Catholicism, and convert at 17 yrs. of age. Also Blessed +Fr. Peyton, +Fr. John Harden, And Venerable ++Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
 
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