Book review: “Pray for Us: 75 saints who sinned, suffered, and struggled on their way to holiness”

In “Pray for Us: 75 saints who sinned, suffered, and struggled on their way to holiness” Meg Hunter-Kilmer writes about saints, blesseds, venerables and servants of God. 

The book contains biographies of these holy men and women that are roughly two pages long. There are no illustrations in this publication. The author divides these people that she calls “saints” to use one term in a loose way to refer to these holy people. She divides them into groups of 12. The groups are: Saints who defied expectations, saints who never gave up, saints who had great adventures, saints who lived ordinary lives, saints with difficult families, saints who found holiness through suffering, saints whose ruined plans opened the way to more beautiful things, saints who were failures, saints who lived with great humility, saints whose generosity changed the world, saints with sinful pasts and saints who were merciful.  

These categories cover many kinds of people. The reader will be exposed to some figures they may not have heard of before. This was the case for me in learning about Blessed Nicholas Steno, Saint Luigi Versiglia, Venerable Margaret Sinclair, Saint Columba Kim Hyo-im, Saint Dulce Pontes, Blessed Anthony Neyrot and many others for the first time.

Hunter-Kilmer does include some well-known saints like: Saint Jerome, Saint Hugh of Grenoble, the now Saint Charles de Foucauld, the newly beatified Rutilio Grande, Blessed Carlo Acutis, Saint Robert Southwell, Saint Charles Lwanga and others. 

One of the figures recognizes, Blessed Bartolo Longo, had been a satanist priest who was converted and went on to build the large shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompei, Italy. There is a biography of Saint Michael Ho Dinh Hy, one of the Vietnamese martyrs who is one of the patrons for one of my fellow monks, Brother John Michael Nguyen, O.S.B.  

This book is packed with all kinds of information that is intriguing to the reader. The introduction informs the reader how to use the book. There are endnotes with citations for outside books and websites. There is an alphabetical index of saints, chronological index, feast day index, geographical index and the book ends with a topical index. 

Hunter-Kilmer earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Notre Dame. She has been a speaker, writer and campus minister. She was involved with the former Saint Gregory's University's campus ministry. This book is highly recommended to those interested in an introduction to some of the men and women the Church has recognized for living lives of holiness. Unfortunately, however, for us Oklahomans, this book does not include a biography of Blessed Stanley Rother.

Br. Benet Exton, O.S.B., Saint Gregory's Abbey, Shawnee, is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.