On the journey toward sainthood

He was an energetic farm boy from rural Wisconsin, walking daily to a one-room country schoolhouse where a single teacher taught all eight grades.

Later, when James Miller taught high school as a De La Salle Christian Brother, he earned the nickname "Brother Fix-It" for the practical skills he brought from the farm and his willingness to take on any task, from mopping floors to coaching soccer.

When he taught in Central America, his adoring Guatemalan students would call him "Hermano Santiago," Spanish for "Brother James."

Today, Brother James Miller, born in 1946, has a new moniker: he is Blessed Brother James, and he is the first American religious brother to be beatified in the journey toward sainthood in the Catholic Church.

But I'm jumping ahead. Long before he was shot to death in Guatemala, most likely a victim of government forces who targeted the poor and those who served them, Jim Miller was an ordinary kid who loved the farm.

Back in those pre-internet days, most of our rural homes had a set of World Book Encyclopedias, and Miller devoured his family's edition. He wasn't an intellectual, but he was intelligent and curious. After grade school, he enrolled at Pacelli High School, staffed by Christian Brothers, a teaching order founded in France in the 17th century. As a high school freshman, Miller felt the call to join the Brothers.

Until the mid-Sixties, students sometimes entered Catholic religious life in high school. Miller entered the Christian Brothers junior novitiate in 1959 as a high school sophomore. He later graduated from St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, concentrating on Spanish with a yearning to teach in the missions.

But first he was assigned to a school in St. Paul. Yearly, he applied for the missions, and after taking his final vows, he was assigned in 1969 to a school in Nicaragua where he spent 10 years and quickly rose to administrative duties.

Then, after a brief stint back in the states, Miller was assigned to a school in remote Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

Many Americans have a fuzzy understanding of Central America's history. Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua all have recent bloody histories of oligarchy, corruption and right-wing militias. The U.S. government, fearing communism during the Cold War, often maintained a relationship with the right-wing dictators.

In 1980, government forces in El Salvador murdered St. Oscar Romero as he offered Mass. Later that year, El Salvador's military abducted, raped and murdered three U.S. nuns and a lay worker. Blessed Father Stanley Rother, another American farm boy now on his way to sainthood, was assassinated inside his Guatemalan rectory in 1981.

But there are countless others, thousands of Central American citizens who were persecuted either because they were poor, or because they were fulfilling the Gospel mandate to serve the poor.

In 1982, only months after arriving in Huehuetenango, James Miller joined this group of martyrs. When men came to kill him, he was repairing a school wall in broad daylight with people milling about. He was brazenly gunned down by assailants who appeared to flee to the local police station.

In his final letter home, Brother James asked for prayers for Guatemala.

"The level of personal violence here is reaching appalling proportions ... and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor and oppressed. The Indian population of Guatemala, caught defenseless between the Army and rebel forces ... is taking the brunt of this violence."

We pray for Central America. We remember Brother James on Feb. 13, the anniversary of his martyrdom, and pray for a miracle to advance his cause for canonization.