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photo of Walter Ciszek, S.J.
Walter Ciszek, S.J.

April 2001--Memorial Library announces the opening of the Walter Ciszek, S.J., Catholic Spirituality Collection. Received as a gift from the Marquette University Student Council of the Knights of Columbus, the wide-ranging collection of books and videos includes Catholic devotional literature, meditations, prayer books, catechisms, lives of the saints, apologetics, conversion stories, and works on vocation.

The Ciszek Collection

  • centrally housed on the second floor of Raynor Library;
  • all materials are available for three-week, non-renewable loan;
  • the "New Titles" feature of MARQCAT may be used to review a full list of items
    in the collection. The list is updated monthly.


The new collection is funded in part by a generous donation by the William R. Burleigh (Jour '57) family of Union, Kentucky. It is named for Father Walter Ciszek, S.J. (1904-1984), a Jesuit priest who endured twenty-four years of imprisonment and exile in the former Soviet Union. Father Ciszek's books, With God in Russia (1964) and He Leadeth Me (1973), exemplify a serious and practical spirituality. "I was put to work doing outdoor construction in the extreme arctic cold", he wrote, "but I trusted in God, never felt abandoned or without hope and survived." In 1963 he was repatriated to the United States and died in 1984.

The Marquette student Knights Council (#6883) has created a standing committee to select and fund the purchase of library materials on a continuing basis. Questions about the collection or suggestions for additions to the collection may be directed to the following:

Scott Mandernack
Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources and Collections
Marquette University Libraries
288-7954

Patrick Doyle
Library liaison,
Marquette University Student Council of the Knights of Columbus
288-5482

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