SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to Beyond the Beacon with Bishop Kevin Sweeney, a podcast of the Diocese of Patterson, New Jersey. Join us for conversations about our Catholic faith, and together let's strive to live a life of faith, hope, and love. We're so glad you could join us. I'm Jay Agnish. With me is Bishop Kevin Sweeney. Bishop Kevin, what's going on? How you doing? I'm doing well, Jay. How are you? I'm good. I uh trying to stay warm out there.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Wee bit chilly out there. We were blessed that the March for Life last Thursday getting to Washington, D.C. It was like almost 60 degrees. Um and then the march on Friday was beautiful. Um Saturday um was cold, I think, and then Sunday the snow came and we're in the deep freeze and um blanketed us up here in North Jersey.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

So you got yourself dug out, we're back to work. So we're back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yes. And very happy to have a special guest with us, uh author and speaker and friend now, Kevin Wells.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Um uh Yeah, welcome to the show, Kevin. Thank you, James, for coming up from Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yes, yes, yes. I always like coming back to Jersey. I feel I feel home here. Good folks here. Sturdy folks.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Nice. And we're gonna be talking about maybe how Kevin and I got to know each other and some of his work. And uh Venerable Father Aloysius Schwartz, the founder of the Sisters of Mary, and uh you'll hear a great story. Um and uh we're gonna begin with the prayer, and um we venerable Alawish Schwartz, who died in 1992. Kevin tell you more from ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, but born in 1930. Um, so he was only 62. Um uh and these causes open for canonization, venerable, and we're gonna pray the prayer of intercession um for Venerable Alawish Schwartz. So we'll place ourselves in God's presence, name of the Father and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray. Almighty, ever-living God, giver of all good gifts, you have filled Father Al with an ardent love for you and for souls. You have inspired him to dedicate his life to relieve suffering of the orphans, abandoned, and sick and the poor, especially the youth, which he did with all humility and courage until the end of his life. May his holy life of love and service to the poor be recognized by the church through its beatification and canonization. For your honor and glory, we pray for the life of Father Al be an inspiration for us in striving for perfection in the love of God and service to others. I ask you to bestow upon me through the intercession of Father Al. I ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, and maternal aid of Mary, the Virgin of the Poor. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Venerable Aloysha Schwartz, pray for us.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Um, so let me do the let me do the quick introduction here for Kevin. Uh Kevin Wells is a former, he's a former Major League Baseball writer for the Tampa Bay Rays, award-winning journalist and Catholic speaker. He's the author of Priest and Beggar, The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz, the Priest We Need to Save the Church and Burst. Uh he's working on some other projects, which maybe we'll get into. Kevin is an active evangelist and writer who has presented at conferences and seminaries, seminaries nationally and internationally. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

So welcome, Kevin. Thank you, Bishop. Good to be here. I thought I might begin by uh just sharing a little bit of how Kevin and I came to meet. Um so I think it was um do you know if it was 24 when we went? Um uh anyway, uh it might I think it was fall of October 23, I want to say. But I gave a I celebrated Mass for our Catholic school teachers, and I gave a little book about St. Carlo, now St. Carlo Acudis, um Five Ways for Carlo to get to heaven. Uh and I spoke about him, I gave it to the teachers. Um, and after the mass, a teacher from Pope John Brian Corcoran or Carlson, but uh the son-in-law of a mutual friend of ours, Jim Manhart, um, teacher at Pope John came. I was talking to him afterwards, and he says, You want a good book, you should read Priest and Beggar. Uh the name stuck. I said it's a great title, Priest and Beggar. So here's Priest and Beggar. Uh I get the book, and four pages in, I read this, as you will read, hopefully, because it's a great book and I highly recommend it. Uh The Life of Father Aloysha Schwartz. Very briefly, Kevin writes After ordination in 1957, Father Al raised his hand to be sent to the saddest place in the world, South Korea, after the Korean War. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, he stepped off the train in Seoul as a fresh-phrased priest and found himself in a dystopian novel. Squatters with blank stairs picked through the hills of garbage. Paper-fleshed orphans lay on the streets like leftover war landmines. The scene haunted him. So he reached down to lift up one child, then another. And within a few years he had changed the course of Korean history, and many in the Southern Peninsula saw him as Atlas. Yet he prayed to be unknown. The reason you don't know yet about him is that he didn't want you to know. Had St. Teresa of Calcutta come under the gaze, had not come under the gaze of biographer Malcolm Mugridge, she likely would have remained in obscurity. As Schwartz has. Mother Teresa and Father Al esteemed each other's work from afar. And they would meet at one point, and Father Al said she should get, he wanted to get her uh washed clothes, washing machines. As I'm reading this book, I have no idea who the author Kevin Wells is, but I say, who is this guy saying that somebody is like Mother Teresa? Um I uh well get to know Father Al and the sisters of Mary. They may not be as numerous as the missionaries of charity, but they do the work of seeing Jesus in the poorest of the poor. Um and it started with um Father Al. So um give us a little bit more to get us introduced to the venerable, wonderful, uh, blessed, uh venerable Father Aloisha Schwartz.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Well, thank you, Bishop Sweeney. That that's a good place to.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Sorry, and then I wrote an article. Uh the teacher in Pope John sent it to his father-in-law Jim Manhart. Jim Manhart said a bishop wrote an article, and uh somehow you got my number and we connected on the phone, and then we ended up going to Mexico together.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

But yeah, I heard I heard you were a Yankees fan, so so I wanted to get to know the dark side. So so we we uh after going back and forth about my Orioles and Yankees, we uh we got into Father Al, Mother Teresa, and you're right, like so many folks are like you. They're like, who's this arrogant Catholic writer Wells saying that this guy, Father Al is like Mother Teresa? But but I I do think uh, well, I'll say that many, many folks have have read this or learned about him. They're like, my goodness, yeah, there's there's a direct linear symmetry. And so what is it? You know, Mother Teresa and Father Al, they they made a decision to amputate all comforts, annihilate all comforts, and do revolting things, you know, pull worms out of cuts, you know, get into the nasty gullies, pick people up that were putrid and say, no, this is this is the face of Christ. And so, yeah, so that's why Father Al and Mother Teresa, they were too busy to get together too often because they were in the streets. But but when they'd get together for some kind of function that honored them for serving the poor, they loved each other. Um, I I I think I I'd like to tell your viewer one thing about who Father Al is, because you don't know who he is, most of you folks. At one of the get-togethers, uh where Father Al was with Mother Teresa, stunningly, Father Al uh went up to her and said, Mother, I'm going to buy you washing machines. This is back in the early 80s, and mother, you know, all four foot eight, looks up to Father Al, and you know, what are you what are you talking about? And Mother, everyone already knows that your sisters of or missionaries of charity are humble. They should not be in the streets washing their sorries. They should be in the streets working, it's wasting their time. Who says that to a saint? I I don't I don't know except Father Al. So Father Al was bold. And mother got it. Mother got it. Uh, because Father Al kind of blended his boldness with a wink and a smile. Mother's like, hmm. So that's why they were fast friends.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

And uh just give us a little bit of his humble beginnings. Uh uh father struggled, was sick, one of many siblings uh outside the Washington in uh where did he grow up?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the Great Depression in Washington, D.C. Like politicians don't venture to the area where Father Al grew up. Um could not have grown up at a at a worse time. Dad had a fifth grade education, so the worry of the Schwartz family, uh a big Catholic family, was we're gonna get thrown out on the streets because dad is a lousy job. Um we the it was dark. There wasn't, you know, they they struggled like a lot of poor families in the depression.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

And he was uh an aunt who was a religious sister, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

And he went to visit the convent. That that really set the course for Father Al's life. His aunt, uh sister Malfreda, it was his dad's sister, saw something early on, a spark in in Little Al, Little Aloysius. Um that was uncommon and and and little Al loved her. So she began to gently, little by little, form him, especially in those years when his dad was ill for two years and really bedbound for two years. And that's kind of where it began. Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

And uh eventually turning down a high school scholarship and going to Mary Knoll, who were the missionaries of the time, sending priests to the most difficult areas of the world, but him discerning that they they still had a bed and three square meals when they were serving no matter where. And they're gonna and um uh what was the name of the community that he ended up studying for in Belgium, right? Well, because it's a long French name, we'll we'll do the abbreviation, the Samus. That's Samus, right, right. And uh a place that's very um not the most popular, well-known Marian apparition, but um uh Our Lady of Bano. Banot, right, and dedicated his life to the Mary as a seminarian. Uh if I can do the maybe longer story short, almost doesn't get ordained, has to come back, fight for his vocation, gets ordained, gets to Korea as we picked up the story, and um and because there's so many orphans, he starts these orphanages, uh Boys' Town, girls town, right? He used the uh name, and um puts ads in the newspaper. He was a great fundraiser. That's all in a book about the early uh mail fundraising, right? And putting little things in the mail to get a donation back and some Hollywood people involved and um a little discrepancy with his bishop along the way in Korea. Um, but he starts these boys and girls towns and schools and needs teachers and those, and so he puts ads in the Korean newspaper uh for young women as he's interviewing. He's thinking who would be a good nun, starts the Sisters of Mary, um moves to uh starts a uh a boys and girls town, I think, in the Philippines. And eventually, as he's around the time he's diagnosed with ALS, goes to Mexico to open a place in Chalco, and that's where we got to go. Um and um I think uh to introduce maybe Chalco where I was uh the summer before last time. So I think the summer of 24 with Kevin and a group, and Kevin has been many times and can talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

But maybe you can show us, Jay, right, the little clip we have of um how many students at the at the about 3,000 girls in Chalco and at Guadalajara boys town, there's about 2,100 boys.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

And uh the sisters, there's still a few Korean sisters who came over with Father Al. Uh that would have been the uh late 80s, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I guess um he arrived in Mexico in 1990. 1990, and and the first uh girls town, boys' town in Chalco started to go up in 92.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

So we go, and it's you if you go, as we'll talk about the opportunity you're gonna have to join us uh on a pilgrimage there, not only seeing the sisters and their work and the girls and the girls' town in Chalco, but it's right next to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Um and so um I had the privilege of celebrating Mass. Uh and do we have a clip, Jay, for uh let's go to the uh go to the clip. Um I remember Kevin talking about being there. You were there during the pandemic, right? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh and you talked about a music rehearsal and them learning a song and uh wow to see them all sing it together, it was just um uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

So Jay, before you before you this is great that you found this. I I just want to set this up just very briefly.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Please, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

So in the teeth of COVID, like right when COVID started, I got the assignment to write this biography on Father Al, who I didn't know really. I I knew of him, and but everything shut down. Libraries, I couldn't, I'm like, I gotta write a book and I gotta deadline. So so um everyone at World Villages, the board of directors, the president, the CEO said, no, Wells, you can't go to Chalco. And I knew in Chalco there were sisters there that tended to Father Al as he was dying of ALS. So a biographer needs first hand sources. As a journalist, I knew I gotta get the Chalco, and this was this was uh late March 2020. So they set up a big Zoom and I and I said I got one minute to make a pitch to get the Chalco, and I went hard. And before anyone could speak, a Korean sister that cared for Father Al as his body was collapsing in Mexico said, I want Kevin in Mexico. And whatever this sister Margie says goes. So the next two days later, I found myself on a plane, and there was nobody on planes at that time. And got off of Mexico, passed the COVID test, got into this uh what I'll call a humble kingdom of resurrection. So to set up this clip, um, I didn't know any really anything about the sisters, the kids, much about Father Al. I came there to research his life and interview and et cetera. So one day I'm I'm walking around and I hear some singing up coming from one of the buildings, Bishop, that you you're familiar with, the four seven-story high buildings. And uh I go up and oh, and they're singing songs in Spanish, and it's very beautiful, and and uh I don't want to disturb them because uh it was a music class. And so I was going back down the stairs to leave to continue to walk around, and and this little girl like Cindy Lou in the Grinch grabs me by the sh uh and says, Come, come, come. So I went back and look at the gift they gave to this American out of his element on my second day in Chiaco. This is what they gave me right here. All right, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

That's Kevin's voice in the background, I think. Look at the smiles, right? Look at that. Country Road. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Um I I just want to say very quickly, Bishop, so they sung a song in English, but guess what Father Al's favorite song was? Country Roads. Is that right? Okay. This is to memorialize right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Well, we'll try to get the clip um uh to see the 3,000 at Mass. They have to, yeah. Um and then with the Sunflower and their coordinated moves, and uh uh so I had the I guess we were there um from Thursday to Monday, and um and uh but Sunday Mass was just um so beautiful. Uh and the um uh they're like little families, right? And broken up um uh and uh and and um uh Father Al um formed leaders, right? He wanted to form disciples, right? So they they're they're they come, the sisters go into the toughest areas uh in the surrounding parts of Mexico, right? And uh uh find the families that have the greatest need and say that one of the children can come, and that child will be raised through late grammar school, into high school, and be ready for college. And but as a person of faith, as an evangelizer, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, that that's it. I so the sisters, Father Al said to the sisters before he died, the way we serve is to wear a constant crown of thorns. And we must do things that are dark and difficult. So I think it's important for your viewer to know that the sisters they don't wait for the children to come to them. They go out onto the highways and byways of the darkest places, like in this case, Mexico. So, like the state of Guerrero is known as the area where human trafficking is as prevalent as any place in the world. So, two by two, the sisters will climb these mountains, uh these hills, and sort of split the seams of these trees where there's monsters, like human monsters, like traffickers, MS-13, drug runners, murderers. But the sisters are like, well, there's we know there's girls up there, so you can kill us, but we're in a I think we're in a state of grace. So take us out. Big deal. Like Father Al told us to go. So the sisters will get up to that to that um home, to that shack or that lean to, and and uh it's almost like the kids, the sisters will go into a little room and the the poor little girl is like in a tomb. And the sisters will lift the lid and like it's it's it's time, and and the and the poor girl will look to mom, and mom will say, We've been praying that the sisters would come up this hill, and and then the sisters will take the child back down and take a 12-hour bus ride back to Chalco where the sisters begin to remove the wounds and the kid can live again.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

And they spend five years, I think you said five years education. Under the care of the sisters of Mary. And what's that, what do they how do talk about maybe the transformation.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

It is um so when you when folks go down there, uh very often tears happen pretty quickly. And and I've thought over the years, like I've had priests tell me that uh Kevin, I can't stop crying. Uh it's and I and and people say, well, I keep it's so emotional, I cry, I don't know. And I and I've thought about it over the years, and I think it's the closest that one comes on earth, on this side, to see actually what resurrection resembles. And what what does that mean? Well, priests, bishops, laity will go down and they've heard the stories of unspeakable things that happen through these girls and boys. I mean, it can't be repeat, it's diabolic. So they they go down thinking, I'm gonna see sad girls or or girls with bald fists and angry or or psychologically wounded. But what they see is what you just saw. They they see they see joy, they they see this exuberance, this light. Right. And and it's resurrection. So that it's it's a beauty of it.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Um Father Al was an athlete, right, a runner himself. He was uh uh ran every day, and uh I think sees saw the value in uh the you know the the whole person, right? The academic, the spiritual, the physical as well. So the girls play a lot of sports there, but also I guess the value of music, right? That uh uh the the they have a mariachi band, as we saw some of it there, and uh and uh and and and so the education they receive um and and and even the experience of family, right? Living um in those small communities within the larger um uh and and uh so much of that goes back to Father Al and his discernment and his um founding of the dedicating his life to our blessed mother and founding Sisters of Mary and and it continues, huh?

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Everything the Sisters of Mary do uh returns to Father Al. That's the that's the pivot point. And um so Father Al was a marathon or so the kids run. Father Al was an athlete, so the kids have some of the this is interesting to say, because the the sisters know that cell phones, video, music will disturb uh the healing that these kids. There's none of that. So so the kids end up having some of the greatest sports teams, high school sports teams in whatever country they're in, the Philippines, Mexico. They win national championships. Their musical programs win national uh national whatever. Because Father Al understood children that have been wounded cannot have uh whatever a community.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

And they learn um uh the uh gardening and plant and planting as well, right? Uh keep them active, keep them active, keep them feeling dignity.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

I heard a story. You were playing basketball with some of the kids that you're gonna be. Yes, uh they gave me a good run.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Yeah, Diocese of Patterson, you have a good bishop here, because I've taken four or five bishops down there, and zero of them were like this guy. No, no, no. He was out there shooting hoops with the girls and they they came to the house.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

I'll always be happy to, you know, I'm not in the shape that I used to be in. But you get it back out there a little. Um uh but uh uh so beautiful. And um uh how many countries and we the um the World Villages for Children, right? That eventually became the name of the maybe umbrella group that um uh helps to promote and coordinate some of the and uh sponsor really um uh uh so much of the work. Um but so the sisters of Mary are in how many countries now?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

They're in six countries. There's over 20,000 of these children who the sisters of Mary. 20,000. 20,000, about 370 sisters of Mary throughout the world. Um it is their uh the burden of their identity, the burden of their duty to do what Father Alan Courage, and that is find the poorest of the poor, the most wounded, get into the wound, work to scalpel it out, and send them out as Catholic missionaries, Christian missionaries into the world. Matter of fact, Bishop, I'll tell you, I so each year they graduate, approximately 3,000 kids throughout the world. These kids go out and they proclaim the Catholic faith, the mission uh they proclaim Jesus Christ in a way that I think puts them as some of the greatest Catholic missionaries in the world because they don't know any better than to proclaim the fullness of the gospel. Why? Because they were dead. Right. And the sisters raised them back to life, so they went to help.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

And the rosary and Eucharistic adoration, and obviously mass are a big part of their daily life.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Um, every every night at 7 o'clock, 20,000 kids uh pray the rosary in unison. Uh adorations where uh oftentimes their wounds become healed. Uh the mass, it is authentically Catholics. Because that's the way that's the same.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, yeah. It's powerful. Like praying the rosary is part of the healing. Absolutely as well. Absolutely, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

And really quick, why? Because Father Al got, as as Bishop mentioned earlier, Father Al dedicated his entire priesthood to Mary at Our Lady at Beno. So he emphasized to the sisters, as as Mary d directed my entire life, the kids' life will also be maternally protected. So the rosary is incorporated every single day of their lives.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

How far away is Our Lady of Guadalupe from the property? So uh depending on the traffic. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Bishop's right. So so if it's a good day and there's no traffic, you can get there in about 40 minutes. Mileage-wise, it's probably no more than twenty-five miles.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Is it a good time to maybe just give a little overview of the pilgrimage that's planned for?

SPEAKER_02 25:47

We'll make uh some of these available. Uh but uh you have the dates there, Jay, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah. So it's uh I do not it's September. September 28th to the 21st.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Okay. So it will be the Feast of the Archangels on the 29th. Ah. And the 29th to 28th, too?

SPEAKER_00 26:05

No, so it's the it's it's actually September 18th through the 21st. Okay, okay. It's right there. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Gotcha, right. So yeah, we'll have uh check the show notes for September 18th to 21st. Okay. It's also going to be uh baseball playoff season.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Uh no, the end of September is the end of the regular season. The Yankees should be clinched by then. So what's so what Jay?

SPEAKER_00 26:23

So what Jay is bit So So Jay is saying, Bishop, that that's the stretch run. So really quick, my brother David is Father David Wells is going to to help lead this pilgrimage. So one thing is gonna happen, one of two things is gonna happen. Either we're gonna be tearing you up because the Yankees will be sinking. I don't think that'll be what happened. Okay, well we'll we'll we'll we'll hatch this out, but this is the perfect time, so we'll be having a good time, my brother and I teaming up on you. But uh yeah, it's uh big Orioles fans, yeah. Huge Orioles fan, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

His brother is not the David Wells, who I think spent a little time with Baltimore, but uh won his championships and pitched his perfect game as a as a Yankee, but that's a lefty, not pitcher, not your brother.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

No, it's not it's not that David Wells. I know that David Wells. I used to interview him. Oh, that's right. Yeah, but but uh no, it's a different David Wells. But this David Wells, who who will love you and I think you'll like him too, is uh is is fluent in Spanish. Uh he cannot wait to go. He wants to meet you, but uh but this pilgrimage to Guadalupe and to um to Chauco. Um I I've led it a few times. I've I think I've led, I don't know, fifteen or so pilgrimages. Uh people do not go back home unchanged. So it's I would encourage folks to look into real quick.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

So uh it includes a sacred walk up Tipp Teppiak Hill. Tepiac. Tepiak Hill. The place where Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. And Daily Mass celebrate Mass Daily with Bishop Kevin Sweeney and Father David Wells, including Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Sisters of Mary at Girlstown, deep spiritual talks. Bishop Sweeney and the Wells brothers will offer pilgrims several reflections and meditations on the intimacy of Our Lady, prayer, sacrifice, and living the faith. And come to know come to intimately know a future American saint, Father Al, learn about his work and the founding of the Sisters of Mary. And Sister You'll see you'll visit Sisters of Mary in Girlstown, witness how the Sisters of Mary are transforming the lives of poor children through education, faith formation, and vocational skills training and sending them out into the world as Christ-like missionaries. And it's three-day. Three days.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

And on earth, Father Al may not have wanted anybody to know him. Um but now uh it's up to the Holy Spirit uh and uh um talking before uh that World Youth Day is gonna be in Seoul Korea in 2027. So I think a few young people might get to know uh Father Al and his work in Korea, where it all began for him uh and for the sister Mary. Uh so who knows how that might help his uh uh cause moving along. But um but uh if and I invite viewers, listeners to consider coming. Um uh we'll put the uh information right for is who they'll contact uh World Villages for the um registration or more information. We'll put it on our Daosin website.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Yeah, go to go to worldvillages.org. That's worldvillages.org to sign up for the pilgrimage or to learn about the work of the sisters and father al. Anything you need to know, worldvillages.org.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Uh you were able to visit the sisters in Africa?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yes. Yeah, so Bishop um I'll reiterate um what Mother Teresa and Father Al knew. Um we go to the poorest of the poor. And Africa is a different level poverty. But I I do I do feel compelled to to just say a few things about uh African poverty and and the boys' towns and girls' towns there. It's it's the newest uh the newest schools that the sisters have established. I just just one briefly one story that I've recently written about. There's an island off the coast way uh on the west side of Africa, and a missionary priest found out there uh a uh a young lady had been bitten by um a snake, a poisonous snake, and she was bedridden. Um and there's nothing on the island. I mean there's there's no there's no work, sustenance is is low, there's no medical help. And but but he he had learned that this girl uh wanted education. So somehow he contacted the Sisters of Mary way out in uh in the heart of Tanzania, um saying, uh can you come out? Well, that's all the sisters needed to hear. So the sisters drove drove 12 hours in a bus to the coastline and then they traveled nine hours on two different boats over the rough waters on this little boat so combined 22, 23 hours, something like that, to get to a single girl. A single girl. I met this girl a year and a half ago. I saw her before on the island where she looked close to dead, and then I saw her a couple years later where she looked like um somebody ready to take on the world. She wants to be an accountant. She told the story, but that's what the sisters do. That's what Father Al encouraged. We take on things that most folks simply won't take on because God commands us to. We Matthew 25, we we go out in the highways and byways. So the sisters go into villages in Africa where lions are, where elephants are. I mean, the sisters, two sisters were there a few years ago, and there was food, and elephants came in the mill violent elephants came and they ravaged where they were staying. They ate all the food. But the sisters, so the sisters know when to travel in Africa when the lions are sleeping, like they know to get to the children. Like it's it's it's almost it's a movie, except it's not a movie, it's real life.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Right. I can't you if you read this book, you'll have a better idea of what Kevin is speaking about in terms of how Father Al founded the sisters and uh how he formed the sisters and how they can continue that work today in in his spirit. Um uh really highly, highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah, great. So we also want to learn a little bit more about you, Kevin. So can you maybe tell us how you came to write the book and a little bit about your background leading up to that, perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Uh sure. Thanks, Jay. Uh you know, it's as far as the what led to to Father Al and Priest and Beggar, I had written a book in 2019 after the scandals called The Priests We Need to Save the Church. And and a gentleman and his wife came up to me and they said, We know who it is. His name is Venerable Aloysha Schwartz, and and um we'd like you to write his biography. And I had no desire to write it because I didn't know who he was. And and once I began to understand the incomprehensible amount of work he had done for the for the poor and what he had done with these schools, I said, Yeah, I'd like to write the biography. So that's what led to Priest and Beggar. Uh as far as uh as far as me, we don't want to put your readers or your viewers to sleep.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

But I think The Hermit is great. Uh and now I haven't read yet, but uh Coached by the Cure, uh a book on John Viani. And um there's another one.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Um we we wrote uh Burst, The Story of God's Grace Women. So um yeah, I'm just uh I I'm just uh a happily married man of um three three children, um bit from a big Catholic family, ten of us. Um family of builders? Family of builders, yeah, masonry contractors. I I served uh the business for a good 17, 18 years, and uh now I'm back to writing. Um but uh yeah, I'm just uh I'm I'm a very fortunate uh man. I don't know why, but God's been good to me and He's allowed me to write these, you know, I I I'll say this, Bishop and Jay. One of the things that I think I pray about, um, you know, we're living in times that are frenzied, let's say, uh put it kindly. Uh there's balkanization, there's splitting sides, and and I'm like, God, what would you have me do as a writer? Like, what would you have me do? And and one of the things I try and I've been trying to do through my articles or my books is I just try and hold up paragons and titans and holy Catholic witnesses. And and what I see is even some of these folks who are on the far right or the far left, or this is my tribe, you your tribe's no good, is I've seen when you hold up tales of nobility and true hero, true hero, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Right. People are And there seems to be fewer or fewer of them in some ways, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, and you gotta hold them up. And people come out of their tribes, and they're like, you know what? I I shouldn't be so tethered to my ideology because he's showing, like Father Al, for instance, he's showing me that it's unacceptable just to sort of be so so I'm I try and write about these type of uh witnesses.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Uh what are some of the other spiritual lessons that Father Al can offer us?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Here's one that I think plagues the world. I know it's plagued me, I'm guilty of this. Is one of the things that I think has really hurt humanity and and the Catholic Church, to be frank, is comfort. And Father Al knew when he went to post-war Korea that if he was going to be a priest who he promised, vowed to marry, he would die to all comforts to live poor, to save the poor. When he saw the magnitude of the orphans, the tubercular, uh, the women living under bridges, um, etc., he said, Well, if I'm going to begin to do God's work, and again, he was the only American priest there. He didn't know the language. He he had a long way to go. He said, I will become poor and live poor. So he left the rectory and he made a decision for four and a half years to live in a shack.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

This shack was was I still have an image of that shack uh from the book uh uh at the bottom of a hill with people living with tuberculosis.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

No, no, no. He would visit them on the mountains.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

But no, the shack he lived by himself, no electricity, no running water, nothing. Smelled rats. Um but he knew that this shack in a certain way would, the walls would act as a wine press, the court of to crush him into what the hermits knew, the saints knew, like all he had was God. So he read scripture in there, he read the lives of the saints, and he also thought, like, God, tell me how to help these poor, tell me how to help these poor. And uh and that's what led to, well, I need sisters. I need sisters. And that's when he began The Sisters of Mary.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

And there's a great story about him taking on a local uh um gangster, right? That was uh across the street. Uh um uh the uh um uh the the property and uh um the the organized crime in Korea at that time, and uh uh the the criminals weren't too happy with Father Al. Father Father Al They didn't know who they were up against.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

No, Father Al Father Al is a movie. Father Al is like Maverick from Top Gun. It literally, just very briefly, I'll say he knew that under this kingpin, Big Daddy, who is in the pockets of politicians, I mean, people were horrified of him. He was the kingpin. Father Al understood that um many uh dozens or hundreds of people were dying under his care. Because he would take the drug the prescription pills that he said would help them and cure them and sell them on the dark market. And Father Al knew people were dying there. So if you if anyone has seen Schindler's list, Father Al said to Big Daddy, I will I will buy I want to buy your building. Essentially he was buying souls. And Big Daddy didn't like the $750,000 that Father Al offered and said that's cheap. And then Father Al, that's when the fight started, and Big Big Daddy began to attack him. His gang, he had a gang of lepers, a s a crime syndicate, a gang of lepers that would go after Father Al and his sisters. But Father Al couldn't be beaten because Mary protected him, and Father Al eventually got him behind jail, and he got all of those boys and girls, and that bishop is how the boys' towns and girls towns started. He took them out of this haunted house of death and brought them into these boys, towns and girls' towns.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

There might not be a movie yet, but there is a comic book. That's right. Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh Is it your first comic book? First and probably last. But it was great to do. There's a new comic album called Fear Nothing by Voyage Comics. It's superbly done. Uh not because of me, but they asked, they invited me in to sort of uh form the uh story arc and collaborate, and it is just out. I would encourage anyone who who has a Kevin gave me a copy, we'll we'll get them make them available.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Yeah, uh right.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

They did a wonderful job and uh the story, the the story's exceptional because his life really is sort of a comic book hero. He couldn't be taken down, and he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. He really did.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Awesome. Um so so just getting back to you, how do you go from a s being a sports writer to to the life you have now, Kevin? Ah. Seems like a pivot there somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

A big pivot. Um well, uh uh Jay, you went there, so I'll just say briefly, I had a I had a near-death experience where I had a brain aneurysm and um in 2009, and um uh I shouldn't have survived. I had a failed brain surgery and um a uh Yeah, this is quite a moving story.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Um you had an uncle who was a priest, a wonderful priest, who was killed in his rectory, um, and his priest friend came to pray, and it seems like your uncle came to say that the Lord had more work for you to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Is that Yeah, the for those who don't believe in miracles, stop it. Because because yeah, if he if he was here right now, Father Jim Stack and his assistant who were in the uh the neuro ICU room and were praying over me, asking for my uncle's intercession, Monsignor Tom Wells, and that was the priest's best friend, Father Jim Stack. Um that's when the lights began to pop and the temperature changed in the room, and the next day um all the all the blood and fluids and malformation they couldn't get out was all gone. And and Jay to answer your question, you're you're you're an idiot if you don't come out of that and say, God, what do you want? Yeah. What do you want? So that's how I really got into uh more um I mean everything changed. Uh not only just Catholic uh you know, not writing Catholic books and articles, but you know, Lord, more masses, rosaries, more measures of love at the home, more prison ministry, whatever it all the Catholic heirlooms that a man knows when he survives death, it's like God, I I owe you now. Like I I you pulled me out of of the pit. So so ever since then, um I've been trying to to evangelize. Um not not like Father Al. I'm not uh you know, I'm a little pittance compared to him, but I'm just trying to be a better Christian witness in the world and and really to be unafraid, because we're not in the point right now uh in America 2026. We have to be uh I I think comfortable with being uncomfortable and proclaiming Christ and natural law and and so I'm just trying to oblige, you know, Christ pull me out of that time.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Yeah, we had a fascinating we we went out for dinner last night. You were telling me how you take an opportunity. I was really inspired by uh when you you were telling me a story about when you're on a plane and you you're talking to someone and you you somehow you found a way to bring to bring up Christ, I wonder, um and evangelize. And um can you can you give us a little insight into that? Yeah. Perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

I I made it a point a while ago, because I I travel a fair amount, that every single time I'm on a plane is right away I'll make it a point, whoever's sitting next to me, to engage in some way. Um Hello, hey, how you doing? Well, weather's cold, or right. So oftentimes you'll you'll end up getting in a conversation with this person, even when the plane's still on the tarmac. And and I do it for a single reason, selfishly. It's to it's really to try and share my Catholic faith. Um, because again, I I I I owe I owe God here. So so just the other day, uh his name was Steve, he was on the phone and I heard him say, hey, you we're gonna give you a thousand dollar Christmas, or not Christmas bonus, a thousand dollar bonus because the work you're doing, blah blah you go on and on. So he he hung up and I said, Sir, I'm I'm sorry, I don't mean to intrude, but um I overheard, I eavesdropped, I used to give out bonuses, it was always my favorite day of the year as a contractor. How how do you so we got into the whole bonus philosophy, and then I found out, Bishop, you'll appreciate this. He used to be a baseball player. So we were talking baseball for 20 minutes, and and here's the the key point. So I think we all understand in the in the course of conversation with folks, we're not judging, but we hear maybe that they throw out a GD or maybe a bad word or they say something disparaging. And we think, well, you know, he's probably it seems like he's distant from God or distant from Christ. So I'd a you know, I'd sort of sniff this out with Steve, and good man, but so so then in my own mind, what I what I do over and over and over again on these different trips is I'll say, Holy Spirit, come, Holy Spirit, come, Holy Spirit, come. And I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for that one word or thing he'll say that opens me up to say to bring Christ in. And and he did it. He said, in this particular instance, I don't know if we talked, I don't know if we talked about this last night, but he he said, Yeah, I I don't so much like my daughter's boyfriend. Um they're living together in Atlanta or something, and I said, Well, he doesn't love your daughter either, and and he's like, Well, what do you? And and I said, Yeah, well, well, my daughter's getting married in June, and I can never imagine her living with her boyfriend prior. And he's like, Yeah, you know, I I really don't appre appreciate it, you know. I'm like, Yeah, I I um I'm a Catholic and and I know what marriage is for. And and that so there's always that I call it the dropping a paralyzer moment. Okay. So that was the paralyzer moment. You say you're Catholic, and then you say, Hey man, you know, you're a dad and you're not being I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say it. I I don't tell Steve this, but sublimally, Steve hears me. Why haven't you asked your daughter to leave your boyfriend? Because he's abusing her or he's using her. And so then the next hour is spent talking about the faith. Or and and we know how this goes. Is is Steve Steve, a German, a former Catholic, he'll say something like, I remember he said, uh, well, Kevin, you know, I pray every now and then, and I saw a movie the other day, it's called If I Can Only Imagine, and it made me cry. And I'm like, well, Steve, that's great, but but that's just a movie. Like, and you praying every now and then, that's good, but God wants all of you, like he wants all of me. So the point being is this if we're gonna waste the opportunity that we have in front of us, it's never comfortable, it's always indelicate to a certain degree. Steve was starving for su it could have been you, Bishop, you starving for someone to say, why would you allow your daughter to live with a man? Like, why would you be a poor father? What why would you you you so he needed to hear it. Um and and if we have somewhat of uh uh social graces, we can do it in such a way with prudence and charity where Steve doesn't hate me. So so I think it worked pretty well. And last thing I'll say is this, and this is important. So Steve gets off the plane, maybe I'll never see him again, but what I do is this. Hey Steve, here's my cell. Uh hey Steve, here's some books I want you to read. Hey, Steve, hey Steve, uh we'll see you down the road. But when I leave and Steve, I gotta pray for Steve. And maybe I gotta stick Steve in a fast. So it's not just blah, blah, blah, Steve, come to the faith. It's it's getting in the trench for Steve. And I think it's incumbent upon Catholics nowadays, Christians, uh, to go into this world that's that's dark. We have a lot of dark parts, and and going in like Father Al, Mother Teresa, and saying, damn the torpedoes if they hate. You know, it's like the sisters going up the hills. If I die, I die.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

Right, right. Perfect love drives out fear, right? So uh um uh but even thinking of uh parents or grandparents out there who might be listening or watching and maybe has a son or daughter in uh or grandchild in a relationship that's not the best. Um uh, you know, we we pray for one another and uh and God works in mysterious ways and speaks in mysterious ways. So um, you know, uh uh it and as you say, you start with uh come the Holy Spirit, right? So um it's not that we're um running the uh the giving others directions, but we're trying to allow the Lord to speak through us, to to speak that that truth uh with love, and uh and uh um it's really uh amazing to see what God can do when we say, okay, Lord, um as you said, uh you know, what do you have for me, right? So um uh and and he says if you ask, you receive, if you seek you'll find. So he's he's not joking around with that, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:32

No, no, we and we we can I can't do anything without the Holy Spirit. I mean, I would have been talking to Steve about baseball the whole time, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

All right, well, I think we've uh kind of reached the end of our journey here.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Um or the beginning, because uh if if you're watching, you're gonna uh listen and are gonna be able to join us, uh we're just getting started uh on the on a on a pilgrimage uh um to um to our shrine of the beautiful basilica of our lady of Guadalupe and um to meet the sisters and the girls in uh girls town in Chalco and get to know more of priest and beggar, Father Aloysius start. Swartz, this is a good place to start right here. So um please consider and thanks, Kevin, for making the trip to come up and be with us and uh and for all that you're doing, you know, for the church. And um we'll uh we might have you back on at some point uh uh before or after the trip to see how things are going. I love that, Bishop Sweeney. Jay, thank you for having me in.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Thanks for being on. Okay. And thank you all for joining us. Please subscribe, comment, and leave a positive rating. Get to know us better by following Bishop Kevin's Instagram and Beyond the Beacon on social media. Read the bishop's weekly column on beaconnj.org and get in touch if you have a question for the bishop or a podcast topic idea and discover our other podcasts. See you next time.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

Thanks, everybody. God bless you. Take care.