Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz

the rolling green fortress seemed to Al to wrap its protective arms around that speck of a town called Banneux.

At a solemn midnight Mass in the community’s small, candlelit chapel, Al found a seat on a backless bench next to Maurice, who “had one of those hard leathery, ageless faces which could have been 55 or 35”.

She lived in the midst of God’s most treasured souls: the poor, the disregarded, and the humiliated. She had made her schoolhouse into a humble kingdom of acceptance,

Employment opportunities in the city enticed countrymen to find livelihoods away from their homes, where punishing hours in factories weakened their bodies, battered their souls, and tore at the once-harmonious fabric of family life.

Like the shepherds descending the Bethlehem hillsides, the coarse men in his midst—once gnawed by loneliness, rejection, and the cold of the night—came just as they were, and offered just themselves.

through an amputation of self-will that he could properly mimic Christ, the wounded King.

Although all around them was a landscape of poverty, Sister Melfrieda radiated a welcome warmth and a sense of rebirth.