John Cussen

JOHN CUSSEN, Ph.D. is a literature professor at Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

The Blessed Laura Vicuña Story

On another day, in the bookish context of superstar Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez and of his writings, I might speak to you about the Chilean/Argentine near-teen, near-saint, near-martyr whose feast day we celebrate on...

Again, Of Love and Other Demons

With cause I return to the scurrilously inflected Saint Cajetan of Thiene/Sister Laura Mignani allusion in Gabriel García Márquez’s virulently anti-Catholic, 1994 novel Of Love and Other Demons, a reference that I first...

Bonaventure and Aquinas: tenures denied!

To be honest, as I read about the university power spat that resulted in the denial of tenure (or something very much like it) to no less a pair than Saints Bonaventure and Aquinas at the effectively Catholic university that the...

John Fisher, Co-Saint

June 22: We know less than we ought about the saint whose martyring for his faith occurred on this day in 1535. That would be, not the universally recognized St. Thomas More, but instead his less familiar co-saint of the day, St. John Fisher...

Mother Mary Mazzarello, FMA:  Literacy and Letters

On May 13th, we celebrate the feast day of a Sister/saint/writer who at age thirty-five sat down among her juniors and asked them to teach her to read and write. Remarkably, a scant ten years later when in mid-life this nun passed away she left...

Dickens and Don Bosco: A Page from Each

Charles Dickens and St. John Bosco, the first, a London/Victorian novelist (1812-1870), the second, a Turin priest/saint/memoirist (1811-1888)—I am struck by similarities on a page from each. The chief of those similarities is one we do well...