Washington, Wash. DC, w virginia, wisconsin & wyoming

James was born near Steven's Point, WI and was the oldest of five kids in a Catholic farming family. He was taught by the Christian Brothers.  He attended a Christian Brothers high school in Glencoe, Missouri. He joined the novitiate and studied Spanish at the University of Minnesota in Winona. He taught at Cretin High School in St. Paul, MN and was the football coach. He took perpetual vows as a brother in 1969 and was soon sent to mission in Nicaragua to teach sixth grade. Six years later he was named the head of the school. He was recalled to Minnesota to teach again at Cretin H.S. He returned to the mission field in 1981 in Heuheutenango, Guatemala to work with the Mayans.  Brother James often went to rescue his students who were abducted by the military. He knew his life was in danger. On February 13, 1982, while on a ladder fixing the school building, three men shot him at point blank range. in 2018 he was declared a martyr. He was beatified in Guatemala on December 7, 2019. 

Ignatius Press published a book on Fr. Al, as he was known called Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz

Born in Washington DC on September 18, 1930, Aloysius entered St. Charles Seminary in Maryland in 1944. He got his MA from Maryknoll College and then went to The Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He was ordained a diocesan priest in 1957 at St. Martin's Church in Washington, DC.

He died March 16, 1992 in Mexico from ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease). His Cause for Canonization was opened by the Diocese of Manila, Philippines on December 10, 2003. He was named Venerable on January 22, 2015.

Fr. Al worked tirelessly in South Korea after the war. He served the poor founding orphanages, hospitals and schools. In 1964 he founded the Sisters of Mary. After his diagnosis of ALS, he went to Mexico and built a Girlstown in Chalco. After his death, the Sisters founded Boystowns and Girlstowns in Central and South America and Tanzania.

Read more about his life and cause for canonization here.

A relic of St. Damien of Molokai is in the upper church sacristy at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC. Learn more here. 

Paralyzed at the age of 14, Mary Virginia Merrick's cause for canonization was opened by the Archdiocese of Washington DC in 2003. She died in the year 1955 at the age of 88. Mary Virginia started the Christ Child Society. Read more about her life and cause here.

The first African American to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Wisconsin. She died in 1990. More to come.

 Samuel Mazzuchelli, was born in Milan, Italy,  on Nov. 4, 1806.  He entered the Dominican Order of Preachers at the age of 17,  against his father's wishes. At 22, he came to the American frontier in 1828. Once ordained,  he was assigned as a missionary priest of the whole of the Northwest Territory by Cincinnati Bishop Edward Fenwick. Father Mazzuchelli traveled this huge area from the Great Lakes to Mississippi  on horseback, in canoes, or by foot to serve. He served families of native tribes, immigrant settlers, miners, farmers, and Catholic and Protestant political leaders.

In 1847 he established a community of Dominican Sisters in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. He established more than 24 local parish communities that remain to this day. His final parish as pastor was St. Patrick in Benton, WI. He died from pneumonia in 1864 at the age of 57. Hi tomb is in Benton.

In 1993, Pope John Paul II declared Father Mazzuchelli Venerable. Learn more about the annual pilgrimage to his tomb here.

 Read about his cause, opened in 2013 by the La Crosse Diocese here.