The Walter Ciszek, S.J., Catholic Spirituality Collection is a wide-ranging collection of books and videos that includes Catholic devotional literature, mediations, prayer books, catechisms, lives of the saints, apologetics, conversion stories, and works on vocation.

Walter Ciszek, S.J.

The collection was received as a gift from the Marquette University Student Council of the Knights of Columbus and is funded in part by a generous donation by the William R. Burleigh (Journalism '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 collection is 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 Marquette Student Knights Council (#6883) has created a standing committee to select and fund the purchase of library materials on a continuing basis.