DIOCESAN PRIEST SAINTS presents a study which has long clamored for publication. The author asserts that to the best of his knowledge "never before has any book appeared in any language in which the lives of (these saints) have been collected for the edification and inspiration of the Church."

This is a kind of biographical companion to Menti Nostras, the masterpiece of exhortation to advancement in holiness which Pope Pius XII addressed to his clergy in 1950. Father Hutchinson has selected twelve canonized and nine beatified secular priests. He presents their stories in dramatic fashion to highlight the different sacerdotal virtues emphasized in Menti Nostrae. Most of their names are only dimly familiar, because of their annual mention in the Martyrology, or in a breviary memory.

The author exercised a keen sense of discernment in his choice of subjects. In his research he found a secular priest who had worked among the flotsam of such a seaport as Barcelona—St. Joseph Oriol. He gives a poignant portrait of the hunchback of the cell blocks, St. Joseph Cafasso, who tried every means to wangle "his holy hanged ones" into heaven. Few in America ever heard ofSt. Andrew Fournet, adolescent playboy and soldier who became a model of priestly prayer. Blessed Bartolo Buonpedoni was called "the leper saint" in a colony where he was chaplain and patient; St. John Kanti is the saint of priestly gentleness; Blessed Noel Pinot died on a guillotine in his Mass vestments, and the author's ferreting unearthed a saint in a chancery office, St. John of Nepomuc. Father Hutchinson makes the right distinction between perfection and the state of perfection. St. Thomas Aquinas, champion of secular priests, noted that frequently a secular priest has greater inward holiness than a religious; that it requires courage and nobility of soul to work as a parish priest for the care of souls. DIOCESAN PRIEST SAINTS proves that thesis in point of fact.

Any retreat master who has been asked to give conferences to the diocesan clergy will hail this book. The holy, adventurous, selfless lives of these secular saints and blessed are an inspiration for seminarians, priests in every line of duty, and for religious and the laity at large. Father Hutchinson appends a list of ninety-seven canonized or beatified secular priests. It is hoped that he will produce another book from among those named.