Karen Klimczak

Born: October 27, 1943

Died: April 14, 2006

When I think of martyrs, I usually think of people with foreign-sounding names like Perpetua or Attalus, both of whom were thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum for refusing to recant their faith in Christ. Sister of St. Joseph Karen Klimczak—a clown, storyteller, teacher, and peacemaker—is far from that image of martyr. Photographs that capture her warm smile or her loopy cursive handwritten prayer journal entries make her seem like any number of religious sisters I know who have dedicated themselves to service with and for those on the margins. Though Klimczak was not explicitly killed “in hatred of the faith,” she, like those martyrs of the Roman Empire, paid the ultimate price of her life.

Klimczak’s life and death reflect her embrace of “the folly of the cross” and her willingness to see with eyes of faith and forgiveness those who can be difficult to love. After recounting the story of a man who stole a wallet from someone who had offered him charity, Dorothy Day wrote in an essay that we are “to love to the point of folly,” for this is how Christ loved. Over my years in ministry I have encountered people who are incarcerated, ex-offenders, or homeless who stretch my sense of mercy’s limits. Most of us don’t find it challenging to serve the poor we (rightly or wrongly) judge as “worthy”: those who are grateful, hardworking, or simply in need of a hand up.

—Rhonda Miska