(Catholic Herald photo by Amy E. Rewolinski) They may not brandish lances, axes or don chain mail, but they are [...]

Felicitas Gutierrez believes “prayer is the key to God’s heart.” Every day upon awakening, she asks God, “What gift are [...]

He receives $5 a week as an allowance, but $1 goes into the church collection basket. The remaining $4 he deposits into his college fund, which doubles as an “emergency backdrop” just in case he doesn’t come up with enough donations to pay for college for Kelvin, the 17-year-old boy he met in Kenya, Africa, during a month-long mission trip he took with his grandparents in fall 2008.

Few 11-year-olds think about saving for college, and while Robert Liners wasn’t worried about paying for college for himself, he was worried about Kelvin.

One day, Dan DeMatthew was a lively 52-year-old man who mowed lawns and washed cars for his neighbors, shoveled walks in front of the Racine Police Department, volunteered with the St. Catherine High School sports teams, served at the annual Holy Name Society fish fry, and befriended a cognitively disabled man – often taking him to lunch and for a haircut.

Although he worked full time as an administrative manager for the city of Racine, his desire to help others had him volunteering where needed, brown eyes shining at the personal satisfaction received by serving quietly and without fanfare, in the background.

Engineering and faith might seem like an unlikely mix at first glance, but both were on Allison Hofer’s mind last [...]

She’s Amazing Grace to her friends and the people of rural Kentucky. Grace Czarnecki, however, sees herself as “just a middleperson with two groups of people on either side who are extremely important to me.”

Yet it’s difficult to describe Czarnecki’s efforts to help the poverty stricken community of Booneville in the Appalachian region over the last 27 years as anything short of amazing.

He thought the Jan. 12 news report about the earthquake in Haiti was a mistake. Claude Gagnon couldn’t comprehend the [...]

Mary Ellen Mathieu Psalm 46:10 advises: “Be still and know that I am God” – a simple command that, when [...]

If Vue Yang of Sheboygan could convey one message, it would be to let the Hmong residents know that they are not alone.

While helping refugees adjust to life in Wisconsin takes the work of many groups, Yang has devoted much of his life to keeping the Hmong connected through their cultural background and through his love of the Catholic faith.

In November, Yang, a member of St. Peter Claver Parish in Sheboygan, received the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Vatican II Service in Communication Award for his work in helping to bridge the cultural gap through his work in the parish, the community and through the Hmong radio program on 91.1 FM, that he has run since 1983.

“I was very surprised to receive it,” he said. “I did not expect to receive any award because I just do the normal things I am supposed to do – helping people through running the radio show.”

Many 13 year-old girls experiment with makeup, dream about boys and hang out with friends. But that wasn’t the case for Babette Grunow, who spent almost a month at the beginning of her teenage years in 1976 in Guatemala with her great-uncle, Franciscan Fr. Gordian Strykowski, helping people after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the country early one morning. In its wake, it killed more than 22,000 people, injured 74,000 and left more than 1 million homeless.

“Really, you could see horrible suffering because people were just buried under their houses,” the now 47-year-old remembered. “The church there was trying to provide just basic services like soup kitchens and things, or getting them tarps to sleep under and such, and (my uncle) was holding Mass,” she said of the devastatingly poor country.