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Servant of God Julia Greeley
Julia Greeley, also known as Denver’s Angel of Charity, was born into slavery near Hannibal, Missouri. When she was a child, her master, while beating Julia’s mother, caught Julia’s right eye with his whip and destroyed it. After she was freed in 1865, she spent her time serving poor families mostly in Denver. In 1880, Greeley entered the Catholic Church at Sacred Heart Parish in Denver. She attended daily Mass and had a deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. She joined the Secular Franciscan Order in 1901 and was active in it until her death in 1918. Her cause for canonization was opened by the Archdiocese of Denver in 2016.
Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman
Born in Canton, Mississippi, in 193, Thea Bowman converted to Catholicism as a child inspired by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, who were teachers and pastors at Holy Child Jesus Church and School in Canton. Bowman witnessed Catholics around her caring for the poor and those in need, and this is what drew her to the Catholic Church. At the age of 15, she told her family she wanted to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. She left her home in Mississippi and traveled to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where she would be the only African American member of her religious community. In 1978, Bowman accepted a position to direct the Office of Intercultural Affairs for the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, and became a found ing member of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. She became a highly acclaimed evangelizer, teacher, speaker, and writer. In 1984, after the death of both of her parents, Bowman was diagnosed with breast cancer, which eventually metastasized to her bones. Despite the pain she was in, she continued her rigorous schedule of speaking engagements to share her love for God and the joy of the Gospel with others. Bowman would arrive in her wheel chair, with no hair due to chemotherapy, but always filled with joy and smiling from ear to ear. She died peacefully in her childhood home on March 30, 1990, and in 2018 the Diocese of Jackson opened her cause for canonization.
Francesca Pollio Fenton, Catholic News Agency