Copaesthetic, Padre Pio was made a saint last year.
My family is friends with two old Italian priests, Father Mario Bugliosi and Father Roberto Balducelli, who lived in Rome during WWII and hid Jewish refugees in their rectory, right under the nose of the Nazi occupiers. They helped victims of the bombings on the streets of Rome, helping them get medical care and administering the Last Rites to the dying, even while the bombs were falling. At one point, Fr. Roberto was struck in the forehead by a piece of shrapnel, and he continued helping the injured until his friends physically dragged him into an ambulance. In the '50s, they moved to Wilmington, DE and founded the parish of St. Anthony of Padua, where they still work in the church and in the community, even though they must be in their 80s by now. They are incredible men – selfless, gentle, untiring, loving, and wise.
Hey, bully for the Church! Sorry guys, I must have missed out on my Catholic Saints monthly newsletter.
Thanks for the heads up! 
Now to get the next important canonization in place!
I’d like to add that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Christian people who really represented their faith well.
La Rue and I worked together in the failure analysis lab of a semiconductor company. She was unfailingly polite and sweet tempered as well. Sometimes she and I would discuss religion. She mentioned how her church required that its members tithed themselves. However, she did not fully agree with her church about how such money should be spent. She went on to mention that she would set aside the 12% of her income into a separate bank account and distribute it to whomever she felt deserved it.
I was really impressed by such independent thought and always had a deep respect for her ability to maintain her own bearings while being one of the flock.
Did they work with Monseignor Hugh O’Flaherty? I can’t believe I forgot to mention him! Also, Gregory Peck, who played him in a made-for-tv movie. Greg Peck is another wonderful Christian.
And someone mentioned Jimmy Carter.
I’d like to addFather Damien who, in dedicating his life to ministering to lepers on Molokai, Hawaii in the 1880’s, contracted the disease himself and died among the people he ministered to. He reached out to those the world deemed untouchable and treated them like human beings.
There’s also a certain small church who did a pretty good job of reaching out to a young woman who was considered untouchable about 20 years ago and a big church in Hawaii who took a stranger in and gave her a home. Those two churches are a big part of why I’m a Christian.
Finally, there’s a friend of my mother, one of the most saintly people she knows, who is in the habit of saying, “I’ve given up all hope of heaven; I’m just working for an air conditioner in hell!” That’s the kind of Christian I aspire to be.
Around here, in addition to my brother-in-spirit, Polycarp, I’d suggest you look to **Scotticher, Vanilla, **and, the guy who gets my vote for best new poster, Copaesthetic.
CJ
I second Mr Rogers. He never preached to anyone, only led by example.
You may be interested to know that Father Damien is the patron of people living with AIDS. The world’s only Catholic memorial chapel to victims of AIDS is in St-Pierre-Apôtre church in Montreal’s Village, and it is dedicated to Father Damien.
I understand that, ultress, and I would never bring this up with him; I think he’s the type of man who’d be embarrassed by that sort of attention.
But right now, it seems that it’s the Christians who are preaching hatred, who seem to have missed the Christian message of love and compassion and honesty and strenght, who are getting all the press. Sterling examples of Christian principles like the people spoken of in this thread are being drowned out in the din.
I’m not a religious person, myself. I just wanted to let people know that the efforts of the good, quiet Christians out there to lead an excellent life in keeping with the tenets of their faith are recognized. That their actions, inspired by their religion, mean a lot, even to those of us who don’t share their faiths.
A poster in another thread mentioned that some people who claim to be Christians make her want to hide the fact that she’s a Christian. I know what it’s like to live with that sort of secrecy, and I don’t ever want this to become a world in which good people feel a need to be ashamed of their religion, or to hide their beliefs. I’d like to think that this thread is a small way of trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.