Formerly enslaved woman up for sainthood had heart for Denver's needy despite her meager means

By Sheryl Tirol, OSV News

DENVER (OSV News) -- On Lowell Boulevard in northwest Denver, a beautiful Victorian home sits just across the street from the campus of Jesuit-run Regis University.

Inside that house, more than a century ago, a tiny and frail former slave swept the floors, made the beds and tidied the rooms. Blinded in one eye by a slave master's whip, hobbled by arthritis, she then would have walked to a boarding house downtown where she lived, and might have crossed the campus of what then was known as Sacred Heart College to shorten the journey.

That woman, Julia Greeley, born a slave in Missouri sometime between 1833 and 1848, is now a candidate for Catholic sainthood.

As an emancipated adult, Greeley worked for the sister of Julia Pratte Gilpin, who later became the wife of Colorado's first territorial governor. It was that association that brought Julia Greeley to Colorado in 1878, where she would earn a meager living cooking and cleaning homes. She became a devout Catholic who worshipped with the Jesuits, and began the life of charitable acts that would make her beloved during her lifetime and a candidate for Catholic sainthood a century after her death.

Although she had very little herself -- and occasionally even needed help from local charities -- Greeley devoted much of her life to helping those in need. She tirelessly walked across Denver, often pulling a wagon behind her, collecting whatever she could for needy families.

In his biography of Greeley, "In Service of the Sacred Heart: The Life and Virtues of Julia Greeley," Capuchin Franciscan Blaine Burkey writes, "On one occasion, a priest of the Sacred Heart Parish found her pushing a baby carriage along at night. She had found a poor family that needed it. So, she had gone out and begged for it. On another occasion, one of the Jesuits met her carrying a broken doll … she told him that she was taking it home to fix up … to give it to some child."

When she died in 1918, her ceaseless efforts to aid the poor had made Greeley so well-known in Denver that an estimated 1,000 mourners came to Loyola Chapel where her body lay to pay their respects.

"She was a woman with a wide-winged spirit," wrote Frances Wayne, a Denver Post reporter who covered Greeley's funeral. As recounted on the website of Denver's Julia Greeley Home, which assists women facing homelessness, Wayne wrote that her legacy included "eighty-five years of worthy living … unselfish devotion … and a habit of giving and sharing herself and her goods."

In 2016 the Vatican granted permission to open a cause for Greeley's sainthood, naming her a "Servant of God," the title granted to those under consideration for canonization. In December of that year, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver, officially opened Greeley's case for canonization.

The Denver Archdiocese assembled a committee to begin the research and documentation that would ultimately comprise the case to be presented to the Vatican for Greeley's sainthood.

David Uebbing, archdiocesan chancellor, was chosen to serve as vice postulator for her cause, which he called an honor.

"I never imagined I would do that in my entire life. It's my favorite thing I've done as chancellor. It's just so edifying to be close to the process of looking at a person's life and seeing how they've impacted so many people," Uebbing said.

Barbara Wilcots, vice president of student affairs at Regis, who also was part of the committee, described it as a fascinating experience and said Greeley demonstrated values as a Catholic that are relatable to the average person. "Many of the saints seem like superheroes but Julia felt real and accessible. As a Black Catholic woman, I felt a true connection to a rich history that for too long was rendered invisible," Wilcots said.

Greeley is one of six Black Catholics from the United States being considered for sainthood. Four of them have been declared "venerable": Mother Mary Lange, founder of the Baltimore-based Oblate Sisters of Providence, the world's first sustained religious community for Black women; Mother Henriette Delille, founder of the New Orleans-based Sisters of the Holy Family; Father Augustus Tolton, the first Catholic priest in the U.S. known publicly to be Black; and Pierre Toussaint, a noted philanthropist. The sixth is Sister Thea Bowman, a "Servant of God," who was the first African American to be a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.

Building the case for Greeley was a challenge. As was the case with many enslaved people, she never learned to read or write, so the committee did not have any of her writings to rely on.

Uebbing and another member of the Greeley canonization committee, Kevin Knight, traveled to Hannibal, Missouri, where Greeley had lived and had been enslaved. Knight said they worked to document Greeley's existence and turn over every stone to look for information about her early life.

While the process was long, Knight said he felt honored to be a part of it and admires her commitment to her faith. "I would say just how powerful Eucharistic devotion really is there's just no way to explain it. There was something about her works of mercy that truly were works of mercy because she was so centered," Knight said.

Since 2011, the volunteers of the Julia Greeley Guild have been dedicated "to extending Julia's fame for sanctity, proposing her as a model of Christian virtue, encouraging private devotion to her, and helping cover some of the expenses" of pursuing her cause by raising money for that purpose, according to the guild's website.

Mary Leisring, the guild's president and executive director, believes Greeley was chosen by God to do charitable work despite the challenges she faced, and believes Greeley's entire life is a model.

"She stands out as a person that I would like to imitate, when things happen that are not as pleasant as I think they should be. … I try to think of Julia and what would Julia do in a case like this? She walked the streets of Denver … and she never wavered as to who to give things to or who to share things with," Leisring said.

Greeley was conditionally baptized at Denver's Sacred Heart Catholic Church on June 26, 1880, by Jesuit Father Charles M. Ferrari, who recorded the event in a handwritten sacramental record that can still be viewed at the church. Since it was not known whether Greeley had been baptized before, the priest performed what is known as a conditional baptism.

Father Eric David Zegeer, current pastor at Sacred Heart, said no one really knows how Greeley first came to that church.

"For reasons I'm not aware of … she saw this church and came in to pray … and I think it's not implausible to suspect that had she entered other Catholic churches in Denver or other Christian churches, she may not have been welcomed, simply because she was a free Black (former) slave woman," he said. "But the Jesuits at that time, I think heroically, welcomed her."

Not all members of the church welcomed her, but according to various reports, the church pastors vigorously defended her right to worship alongside white parishioners.

Greeley reportedly went to church daily, and from there drew inspiration for what became her life of selfless charity. In 2012, the Julia Greeley Guild published Father Burkey's biography, which includes testimonials, newspaper articles and other information about Greeley, much of it gathered in the 1970s by Franciscan Father Pacificus Kennedy.

"Her charity was so great that only God knows its extent," Father Burkey said in his book. "She was constantly visiting the poor and giving them assistance from her own slender means. When she found their needs so great that she could not help them with her own goods, she begged for them. Her charity was as delicate as it was great.

"She realized that white people, no matter how poor, might feel a little sensitive in receiving assistance from an old colored woman, so she went at night to their homes to deliver the goods she had begged, in order to keep the neighbors from seeing her."

Yet, according to Father Burkey, Greeley was so poor herself that "the city charity department had been furnishing her with fuel and groceries."

Greeley had a special concern for firefighters, whom she felt were risking their lives almost daily to protect Denver residents, at a time when wooden homes and other buildings caught fire regularly. She was known to walk to fire stations across town praying for firefighters and handing out prayer leaflets. In fact, she traveled throughout the city by foot, and it was estimated she walked 20 miles each month to visit the firehouses despite suffering from severe arthritis.

Her advocates note that Greeley had a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion is one of the most widely practiced and well-known Catholic devotions, where the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind." Greeley died on June 7, the feast of the Sacred Heart, in 1918.

In 2017, her body was exhumed from its grave at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Wheat Ridge by a team led by Christine Pink, of Denver's Metropolitan State University. According to the Julia Greeley Home website, the exhumation revealed that Greeley had an extra rib. Pink determined Julia's height to have been 5-foot-1, and said that her spine, legs, and hands were covered with arthritis.

Greeley's remains now lie in a marble coffin at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Denver.

And the Vatican now has 36 volumes of documents, totaling 11,750 pages, detailing Greeley's life and deeds. The next step in her cause would be Vatican recognition of her heroic virtues and declaring her "venerable."

Those devoted to Greeley's cause continue to work on her behalf.

Whatever the Vatican decides, Leisring said Greeley's life and works inspire her. Her goal, Leisring said, "is to try to make a difference in this world, even though you have all of these obstacles. Trying to eradicate racism and trying to help people understand that racism is a sin. And that we're all created by God."