Showing results by publisher "Ignatius Press" in Biographies & Memoirs

The late Fr. Amorth—well-known as an exorcist —enjoyed over two decades of a close friendship with the holy, quirky Padre Pio, whom he considered his spiritual father. Adding his own personal experience to a foundation of biographical research, Amorth gives an entertaining and illuminating account of perhaps one of the best-known saints of the twentieth century.

Sigrid Undset's Catherine of Siena is critically acclaimed as one of the best biographies of this well-known and amazing 14th-century saint. Known for her historical fiction, which won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, Undset based this factual work on primary sources, her own experiences living in Italy, and her profound understanding of the human heart.

Raised in a happy, atheist home, Jennifer had the freedom to think for herself and play by her own rules. Yet, a creeping darkness followed her all of her life. Finally, one winter night, it drove her to the edge of her balcony, making her ask, once and for all, why anything mattered. At that moment, everything she knew and believed was shattered. 

"The world is too small," Saint Frances Cabrini (1850–1917) once declared. "I would like to embrace it all, to reach every corner." This compelling, authoritative biography chronicles the astounding life of a petite Italian-born religious sister who, with the heart of a missionary, conquered all odds to become the first American citizen canonized a saint.

Sohrab Ahmari was a teenager living under the Iranian ayatollahs when he decided that there is no God. Nearly two decades later, he would be received into the Roman Catholic Church. In From Fire, by Water, he recounts this unlikely passage, from the strident Marxism and atheism of a youth misspent on both sides of the Atlantic to a moral and spiritual awakening prompted by the Mass.

In this deeply moving narrative, Thomas Howard describes his pilgrimage from Evangelicalism (which he loves and reveres as the religion of his youth) to liturgical Christianity. He soon afterward became a Roman Catholic. He describes Evangelicalism with great sympathy and then examines more formal, liturgical worship with the freshness of someone discovering for the first time what his soul had always hungered for.  

In 1957, at 27 years old, Father Aloysius Schwartz of Washington, D.C. asked to be sent to one of the saddest places in the world: South Korea in the wake of the Korean War. Just a few months into his priesthood, he stepped off the train in Seoul into a dystopian film. Squatters with blank stares picked through hills of garbage. Paper-fleshed orphans lay on the streets like leftover war shrapnel. These scenes pierced him.

This inspiring, insightful, and often humorous look at the life of Father Stuart Long is told by his close friend, Father Bart Tolleson. After their relationship began and almost ended with a practical joke, the two men were ordained together and forged a strong, lasting friendship. As the exuberant, edgy Father Stu confronted a rare degenerative disease, the former brawler and professional boxer used every ounce of his declining strength to fight the good fight for souls.

Through his prolific and highly regarded writing, Thomas Howard's name is familiar to Protestants and Catholics alike, but many have never heard the story of his conversion to Catholicism. With grace, charm, and wit, Dr. Howard describes his journey from Evangelicalism to Anglicanism, and finally, to the Church of Rome. In a world saturated with fashionable unbelief, Howard's testimony inspires and informs. Fr. Richard Neuhaus calls it "a marvelously engaging remembrance."

When high school valedictorian Ian Murphy was writing his graduation address, a teacher told him that he could not mention Jesus in his speech. She even threatened to pull the plug on the microphone if he tried to do so. Murphy’s defiance, in the name of his constitutional rights, made national news, and his zeal to spread the Gospel, no matter the cost, became the defining passion of his life. Murphy's public battle for his freedom of speech is where this conversion story begins, but then it retraces the other important experiences of his youth.

This book narrates the harrowing and life-changing experiences of former abortion clinic workers, including those of the author, who once directed abortion services at a large Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas. These individuals, whose names have been changed to protect their identities, left their jobs in the abortion industry after experiencing a change of heart. They have come forward with their stories, not for fame or notoriety, but to shed light on the reality of abortion. They want their stories to change the lives of others for the better.

This is the powerful, moving story of a contemporary family’s hopes and dreams that were shattered after suddenly being catapulted into a nightmare, and how they responded to it. It is told by the family’s father, a popular Catholic radio host and marriage counselor, and how he and his wife dealt with the revelation that their two young children have a rare, neurological, and fatal disease. 

This is a unique tale of one man's spiritual adventure, tracing God's unusual plan of providence from 1950s America to England and back again. Dwight Longenecker's conversion story is a roller coaster ride through fundamentalism, Oxford, Cambridge, and the modern Catholic Church. This story of one man's amazing journey from Protestant fundamentalism through the Church of England to the Catholic priesthood offers an inspiring tale of God's providence.

Rich in humor and culture, as well as passion and love for the cause of God and of man, Milestones is the early autobiography of Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger. It tells the fascinating and inspiring story of his early family life, the years under Nazi oppression in Germany, and his part in World War II—including how as a teenager, he was forced to join the Hitler Youth and German army, from which he risked his life to flee.

The world is full of interesting people, and it has been George Weigel's good fortune to have known many such personalities in a variety of fields: politics, religion, the arts and sciences, journalism, the academy, entertainment, and sports. In this collection of reminiscences and elegies, the best-selling author of the definitive biography of Pope Saint John Paul II remembers these men and women from inside the convictions that formed them.