Julia Greeley: Denver's Apostle of the Sacred Heart

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Julia Greeley was born a slave in Missouri. After Missouri abolished slavery she moved to Denver, Colorado where she worked for the family of the first governor of Colorado. She became Catholic in 1880 and developed a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She devoted her life to helping anyone who needed assistance. She would give to others from her own meager earnings, any anything she couldn't afford she would beg for. She was a daily communicant and a prayer warrior. At least one couple overcame infertility through her prayers. She loved children and would organize days in the park for children who didn't have the opportunity. One special ministry was to firefighters. She would go around every First Friday — the day of devotion to the Sacred Heart — and bring pamphlets about the Sacred Heart devotion to all of the firehouses in Denver. She died on the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1918. She did so much good for so many that her funeral was massive. Her cause for canonization opened in 2016, when her body was exhumed and reinterred in the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. She is the only person buried in that church, which opened in 1912.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History.
0:09.0	If you like our podcast, be sure to follow us, give us a five-star rating and a great review wherever you get your podcasts.
0:17.0	Also, please become a supporter of American Catholic History.org slash support.
0:22.6	I'm Newell Heister Crow.
0:23.7	And I'm Tom Crow.
0:24.8	Today we're talking about the only person to be buried in the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Colorado.
0:33.1	It's on a bishop or a priest or even a religious brother or sister.
0:37.9	It's Julia Greeley, a woman born into slavery in Missouri who dedicated her life to caring for
0:43.6	others.
0:44.2	Yeah, this is one of those stories that really makes you look at your own life and wonder,
0:47.9	what am I doing with my life?
0:49.4	I know.
0:50.6	She was so utterly selfless and so eager to help others, including others who had it easier than she did in many ways.
0:58.0	Truly, she is presently a servant of God, and I can't imagine her beatification and canonization will take any longer than absolutely necessary.
1:06.1	She's almost unbelievable.
1:08.0	Yeah, it's a too good to be true sort of story. But fortunately, for all of us,
1:14.5	she was a very real person. So let's start by talking about where she came from. Yes, so
1:20.2	Julia Greeley was born into slavery in Hannibal, Missouri, which is where Mark Twain was from,
1:25.5	sometime in the 1830s or 1840s. Since she was a slave,
1:29.1	a careful record wasn't kept. She and her mother were owned by a very cruel man, and one day
1:34.6	when her mother was being whipped, the whip caught Julia's right eye, seriously damaging it.
1:40.4	It was never treated properly, and it never fully healed.
	...

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