My Life with the Saints

"James Martin has led a thoroughly modern life: from a lukewarm childhood Catholicism, to an education at the Wharton School of Business, to the executive fast track at General Electric, to ministry as a Jesuit priest, to a busy media career in Manhattan. But at every step he has been accompanied by special friends - the saints of the Catholic Church. For many, these holy men and women remain just historical figures. For Martin, they are intimate companions." Martin's memoir encomopasses saints from the whole of Christian history - from St. Peter to Dorothy Day. His saintly friends include Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, Mother Teresa, and other beloved figures. They accompany the author on a lifelong pilgrimage that includes stops in a sunlit square of a French town, a quiet retreat house on a New England beach, the housing projects of inner-city Chicago, the sprawling slums of Nairobi, and a gorgeous Baroque church in Rome.