Heroes You Should Know: Marianne Cope---Loving the Unlovely

Born in Germany, Marianne and her parents immigrated to the United States, settling in New York, when she was one year-old.  Her father was in poor health, so Marianne went to work at an early age in a textile factory to support her family.  But at 24, with her siblings able to support themselves, Marianne was finally free to pursue a religious vocation---joining the Franciscans. 

She began as a teacher, and later a principal for schools in the region with a large German-speaking population. But by 1870, she’d moved into the field of health care, and had helped found the first two Catholic hospitals in central New York---with missions to offer medical care to anyone, regardless of race or creed.

Sister Marianne had become Mother Marianne, as the Superior General of her congregation in 1883, when she received a desperate plea from King Kalakaua of Hawaii for help in caring for the large number of patients suffering with Hansen’s disease, more commonly known as leprosy.  Over 50 congregations had already refused his request, but not Cope.  By December of that year she and six sisters had sailed to Honolulu, and were working at the receiving station for all leprosy patients from the islands.  The most severe cases were then shipped to the island of Molokai.

Although she’d only planned on staying a year, it was determined by authorities that Mother Cope’s leadership was necessary for the success of the mission.  Within two years the King had bestowed on Cope the highest award given by the government for service to humanity.

But in 1887, a new government changed the policy toward leprosy patients and the hospital in Oahu was closed.  Forced exile to Molokai became the accepted practice, and authorities begged Mother Marianne to open a home for girls and women on Molokai.  Although this full immersion in a leprosy colony almost certainly meant that Cope would never be allowed to return to America, and her home, she accepted the invitation.  There she took over the ministerial duties and administrative responsibilities of Father Damien, the future saint who by then had contracted leprosy and was dying.

And for the final thirty years of her life, Mother Marianne Cope ministered to the lepers on Molokai, running a hospital, a boys and girls home, and a school with her sisters.  She died of natural causes at the age of 80, having never contracted leprosy herself despite decades of direct contact with the disease.  This servant to the untouchables was canonized as a saint on October 21, 2012.

Marianne Cope is a hero you should know.  And I'm Dr. Ross Porter.

Walter Ciszek: Saint of the Gulag

Born to Polish emigrants, Walter Ciszek hardly looked the part of a future hero.  He spent much of his early youth fighting anyone who would oblige him; his parents, other youths, the law.  It got so bad that his father actually dragged him down to the local police station and begged them to place Walter in reform school.  His future looked as bleak as the coal mining region of Pennsylvania he was growing up in. 

So when this juvenile delinquent decided in the eighth grade that he wanted to be a Catholic priest, not many people believed him.  But God apparently did.  And in June of 1928 Walter Ciszek entered the Jesuit novitiate, with the intent of being a missionary to Russia.

This coincided with Pope Pius XI’s appeal for the Jesuits to go into what had become the Soviet Union. There, government persecution of religion was threatening the very existence of the Russian Orthodox Church, where the number of priests had plummeted from 157,000 to just 4,000.

Since he couldn’t enter the Soviet Union directly, Ciszek set up shop in Poland, where he taught at the Jesuit seminary and served as a parish priest.  However, when the Nazis invaded in September of 1939, the seminarians were sent home.  And as the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east, the young priest seized the opportunity to enter Russia with a flood of refugees.  With false identity papers, Ciszek stepped into a train bound for  Chusovy in the Ural Mountains.  There, as “Vladimir Lypinski”, he worked by day as a laborer hauling and stacking logs for a lumber factory, and after hours, snuck into the woods to say Mass and memorize the prayer book in case his Mass kit was discovered.

And sure enough a year later he was arrested and accused of being a spy for the Vatican.  He was sent to Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he sent the next five years mostly in solitary confinement.  Under torture he confessed his true identity and story, and was sentenced to 15 years hard labor in a Gulag in Siberia.  There, he worked in coal mines, shoveled coal onto freighters, and eventually as a construction worker at an ore mine.  Throughout his imprisonment, Ciszek prayed with other prisoners, celebrated Mass, heard confessions, gave retreats, and offered spiritual direction.

In 1955 he completed his sentence and was released with restrictions in Norilsk, a town 10 degrees north of the Arctic Circle.  He wrote home to his shocked sisters and his Jesuit community, who had sent out a notice of his death in 1947.  For the next three years, Father Ciszek worked in a chemical factory as a front, but carried on his duties as a priest in secret, even establishing mission parishes.  However, in 1958 the KGB arrested him again for his religious work, canceled his passport, and gave him 48 hours to leave the region.  He was sent to the southern part of the country where he was put to work as an auto mechanic.

Finally in 1963, President John F. Kennedy secured Ciszek’s release in exchange for two Soviet spies.  He returned to Pennsylvania where he wrote his memoir, With God in Russia, and joyfully served as a priest until his death in 1984.  In 1990, his cause for canonization was opened in Rome.

A beacon of light, placed in the darkest part of the Soviet Union for 23 years, this Servant of God reminds us that no place is God forsaken.

Walter Ciszek is a hero you should know.  And I'm Dr. Ross Porter. 

Heroes You Should Know: Mother Antonia Brenner, 'The Angel of Tijuana'

Mary Clarke was born into privilege.  Her parents, Irish immigrants, had built a comfortable life in Beverly Hills, and counted movie stars Cary Grant, William Powell, and Hedy Lamarr as their neighbors.  But Mary was also taught that to whom much is given much is expected.  The Clarke family was regularly involved in service to the poor, both at home and abroad, and this formation planted seeds that would bloom in very unexpected ways for their daughter.

For the first half of her life, Mary was busy raising eight children.  She also suffered through two divorces.  But in 1969, she had a dream.  In it, she was a prisoner at Calvary, awaiting execution when she was visited by Jesus.  He offered to take her place, but she refused.  The dream awakened a religious calling in her, but at that time there were no religious orders for middle-aged, twice divorced women.  This of course did not stop her charitable service in southern California, and also increasingly south of the border.

In the early 1970’s Clarke moved to San Diego so that she could be closer to the work she’d been introduced to by a priest friend---delivering donations to inmates at the maximum security prison in Tijuana named La Mesa.  And when her children were finally self-sufficient, she took the leap of faith, sold her home and her father’s business that she’d been running, and headed for Tijuana, Mexico---to La Mesa---to eventually become Mother Antonia.

And as surprising as this calling seemed---a middle-aged, wealthy white woman from Southern California moving to Tijuana, Mexico to serve in a prison filled with male gang leaders, drug dealers, rapists and murderers---equally strange was the fact that Clarke received permission to do it!  She took private vows and moved into the overcrowded 8,000 inmate prison, and a 10x10 cell, so that she could be close to her flock.  There, she ate the same food as the prisoners, and even lined up for roll call with them every morning.  Within a year she had the official blessing of both the Bishop of Tijuana and the Bishop of San Diego.

Each day she would meet with the inmates, the guards, and their families---to pray with them, listen to them, and offer counsel.  She joyfully chased down material supplies the inmates needed, brought in doctors and dentists from California, advocated for better conditions, and once even negotiated peace during a prison riot.  She hated the crimes, but loved the criminals.  The guards called her the “prison angel”, and the inmates called her “Mama.”  And her ministry grew to the point that in 1997 she received permission from the bishop to found a religious order, the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour---an order for mature women, ages 46-65, who had a love for Jesus and the poor, and could be self-supporting. 

Mother Antonia never left her home in La Mesa prison, and died there at 86 years-old, surrounded by her sisters, and the prisoners who loved her.  She was fond of saying, “Everything you do either adds to the beauty of the world or takes away from it.”  She saw the potential for beauty, she nurtured beauty, and along the way she became beauty.

Mother Antonia Brenner is a hero you should know. And I'm Dr. Ross Porter. 

Heroes You Should Know: Shukria Barakzai

When you think of Afghanistan, what comes to mind?  War?  Osama bin Laden?  Taliban?  Warlords?  Violence?  Sadly, yes.  How about “female journalist, entrepreneur, and politician who advocates for women’s rights?”  Not as likely.

Meet Ms. Unlikely, Shukria Barakzai.

Barakzai was born and educated in Kabul.  But unlike many of the educated class who fled Afghanistan in 1996 when the Taliban seized power, she elected to stay and fight the good fight.  And she’s been fighting ever since.

In 1999, pregnant and feeling ill, she left her home to try and get to her doctor’s office.  The religious police, seeing her without her husband (a crime in their eyes) beat her on the street.  This caused her to miscarry her baby.  But it also lit a fire in her.  She was angry, and decided that day to dedicate her life to championing justice in her country.

She started an underground school in her home.  And when the Taliban was thrown out in 2001, she finished her studies at Kabul University, with a major in archaeology and geology.

In 2002 she founded Aina-E-Zan (Women’s Mirror), dedicated to informing Afghan women on political and cultural issues like child marriage, forced, marriage, maternal and fetal mortality rates, and freedom of the press. 

In 2004 she chose to run against her husband for a position in the Afghanistan Parliament.   He was a multi-millionaire, and she had a shoe-string budget.  He spent the equivalent of $500,000 US dollars and championed the status quo.  She had a microphone and a loudspeaker and did a lot of street campaigning, with the dream of democracy and an end to misogynistic practices like polygamy.  Ironically, it was revealed during this time that her husband had in fact taken a second wife, which is legal under sharia law.  She defeated him by a 3 to 1 margin.

Since that day she has received international recognition as International Editor of the Year by the World Press Review, and Woman of the Year by the BBC radio program Woman’s Hour.

Ten years after her election, she continues to be a voice for change in a system that is not exactly known for its progressive politics.  As Barakzai put it, "Our parliament is a collection of lords. Warlords, drug lords, crime lords..."  Not surprisingly she has received numerous death threats, and survived an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber in November of 2014 as she made her way to Parliament. And she is not afraid to challenge the international community either, even taking on President Obama’s military build-up plan in her country, asking him to “send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of that many soldiers.”

A voice for Afghanistan, a voice for humanity…

Shukria Barakzai is a hero you should know.  And I’m Dr. Ross Porter.

Heroes You Should Know: Vivienne Harr

Like many eight year-olds, Vivienne Harr decided to open a lemonade stand and make some money.  For an afternoon?  No, for 173 afternoons.  To make some fun money?  No, to end child slave labor.  Not your typical eight year-old.

Vivienne had happened to see a photograph of two boys about her age in Nepal.  They each had a huge slab of granite roped to their back, and were holding hands as they stood at the top of a hill.  They were slave laborers.

She figured out, with a little help, that it would take $100,000 to buy freedom for 500 children.  So, she set that as her goal.  On Monday June 25, 2012 Vivienne placed her little stand in the middle of the public park in her hometown of Fairfax, California, and got to work.  At first she charged money for her organic, homemade lemonade.  But soon she realized that if she let people give from their hearts, she’d do better.  So she simply asked for good-will donations.  The average profit per cup jumped from $2 to $18.  One person even donated $1,000 for a cup.

And day in and day out, rain or shine, Vivienne was at her stand raising money.  On Day #52 The New York Times wrote an article about her efforts, and that same day Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof retweeted the story to his million plus followers.  And “Make A Stand” became a movement.  Media outlets from around the world began to share the message.

Finally, at the request of Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City, Vivienne set up her stand in Times Square on Day #173, and surpassed her goal of $100,000.  Her parents wrote a check to Not For Sale, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending child slave labor, in the amount of $101,320.  But this amazing young lady wasn’t through.  She continued to sell until she reached 365 days straight.  And on the 366^th day, her stand moved from the park to the web, and “Make A Stand” Lemonade began selling in bottles.  Today you can also find Vivienne’s lemonade in over 150 stores.

There remain an estimated 30 million human being enslaved worldwide, half of them children.  And Vivienne won’t be satisfied until every one of them is freed.  To that end, Make A Stand contributes a percentage of its proceeds to charities committed to ending child slave labor.

"You don't have to be big or powerful to change the world,” says Vivienne, “you can be just like me." 

What a world that would be.

Vivienne Harr is a hero you should know.  And I’m Dr. Ross Porter.

Heroes You Should Know: Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Ashley Rhodes was born to an unwed seventeen year-old mother.  And to make matters more difficult, the mother took in a drug-addicted boyfriend and became drug-addicted herself.  When the law pursued the couple, they fled with Ashley and her brother to another state where they were eventually apprehended.  Three year-old Ashley and her brother were placed in a foster home.  And over the next nine and a half years she’d find herself in 14 different homes, and attend nine different schools. 

The living conditions were hellish.  Ashley suffered physical abuse, starvation, and neglect.  She watched her brother almost beaten to death in one home.  Another home she lived in had a convicted pedophile living there.  A third was a three-bedroom trailer she shared with sixteen other children.  Several of the homes she was placed in were “parented” by adults with criminal records.  One would expect this in another century, perhaps in another country, but not in the 1990’s…in America.

And as Ashley was shuttled from home to home the courts continued to block her chances to be adopted, at the ongoing request of her biological mother, hoping the woman would pull her life together and take Ashley back.

By 12 she assumed she was too old to be adopted, and had begun resigning herself to the fact that she’d never have a stable home to grow up in.  And then a miracle happened.

Mary Miller, the guardian ad litem volunteer for another child in the group home Ashley and her brother were in, learned that the Rhodes children had gone five years without representation.  She asked and was appointed to Ashley’s case.  And she would eventually connect Ashley with Gay and Phil Courter.

The Courters were working on a documentary about how children are placed in permanent homes, asked Ashley to tell her story, and quickly decided they wanted to adopt her.  “I guess so”, was Ashley’s response.  By then she’d had eight foster moms, and countless caseworkers and therapists, and the transition was not easy.

But the Courters loved their new daughter through the understandable ups and downs, and eventually Ashley blossomed.  She won a scholarship to Eckerd College, became the Youth Advocate of the year for North America, and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Social Work from U.S.C.

Today Ashley is a guardian ad litem herself, having fostered twenty children and adopted one with her husband.  Her memoir is a best-seller, and she continues to work as an advocate for the roughly 500,000 children in America’s foster care system.

For some, surviving childhood is heroic enough.  But for this inspirational young woman, that was just the beginning.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter is a hero you should know.  And I’m Dr. Ross Porter.

Heroes You Should Know: Sophie Scholl

The daughter of a mayor in 1930’s Germany, Sophie Scholl was caught up in the swirl of politics at an early age.  And with the rise of the Nazi party, the idealistic teen-ager and her older brother Hans quickly joined the Hitler Youth.  They, like so many, bought the lie that Adolph Hitler would bring hope and prosperity back to Germany.  But between her father’s early anti-Nazi stance and her own careful observations, Sophie soon realized that Nazism was utterly incompatible with her Christianity.

The letters Sophie received from her boyfriend, who had been conscripted into the army, which told of the atrocities the Nazis were committing further convinced her that she needed to act---and the truth needed to be told.

Simply leaving the Hitler Youth was not enough for Sophie, but open dissent in Nazi Germany was tantamount to signing your own death certificate.  So with her brother and four other friends, she formed The White Rose---an under-ground, non-violent resistance movement dedicated to educating German youths about the evils of Nazism.  

The White Rose studied theology, philosophy, and politics together, and initially Hans wanted that to be the extent of Sophie’s involvement.  But she insisted on being fully engaged in the activism, convincing the men that as a female she was far less likely to be stopped by the SS.

The group purchased a typewriter and a duplicating machine, and by 1942 had begun disseminating their leaflets around the campus of the University of Munich where Hans was a medical student and Sophie an undergrad.  They also initiated an anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler graffiti campaign.

As their mission grew, Sophie would buy the paper and stamps at several locations so as to not raise suspicion, and thousands of leaflets were mailed from different posts.  But in February of 1943 a utility man saw Sophie distributing the group’s literature on campus.  She was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death for high treason.  

As she was led to the guillotine, Sophie uttered her last words.

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

She was 21 years-old.

Sophie Scholl is a hero you should know.  And I’m Dr. Ross Porter.