Unlikely Spiritual Heroes

In this volume, Brennan Hill profiles eight unlikely heroes:

Jean Donovan, a-Harley-riding businesswoman, turns missionary and martyr

Helen Prejean, a religious sister, befriends and advocates for murderers on death row

Dorothy Stang, a religious sister and schoolteacher, champions the environment and loses her life doing so

Pedro Arrupe, a medical school dropout and priest, survives a nuclear holocaust and becomes a great Jesuit leader

Thomas Merton, a party-going ladies' man, becomes a Trappist monk and peace activist

Maximilian Kolbe, a sickly, eccentric Franciscan, turns publisher and dies in Auschwitz, trading his life for a Jewish prisoner

Joseph Bernardin, a bookish, shy son of Italian immigrants, becomes one of the most outspoken prelates of our time

John Paul II, a young Polish poet and actor whose election to pope changes history