Andrew M. Greeley (February 5, 1928 – May 29, 2013) was an American Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and popular novelist. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona and the University of Chicago, and a research associate with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC).
For many years, Greeley wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times and contributed regularly to The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonweal.
Virgilio P. Elizondo (August 28, 1935 – March 14, 2016) was a Mexican-American Catholic priest and community activist, who was also a leading scholar of liberation theology and Hispanic theology. He was widely regarded as "the father of U.S. Latino religious thought."Elizondo was the founder of the Pastoral Institute at the University of the Incarnate Word. He was also a co-founder of the Mexican-American Cultural Center, a think tank for scholars and religious leaders to develop pastoral ministry and theology from a Hispanic perspective. (It has since become the Mexican American Catholic College.) Elizondo was also well known for his book, Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise, which examined the similarities between Jesus' Galilean background and the mestizo experience.
Father William B. Wasson (December 21, 1923 - August 16, 2006) was an American Catholic priest. He was born in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, but moved to Mexico where he trained as a priest. In 1954, he founded Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a charity for orphans and neglected and abandoned children, which today operates across Latin America. Wasson died in August 2006 in Arizona, due to complications arising from a hip injury.
Bruce Ritter (February 25, 1927 – October 7, 1999) was a Catholic priest and one-time Franciscan friar who founded the charity Covenant House in 1972 for homeless teenagers. By the 1980s, it had grown to an $87 million agency, operating numerous large centers in New York and six other major United States cities, as well as locations in Toronto, Canada, and Latin America.
In 1990, Ritter was forced to resign from Covenant House after allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. It was one of the most widely publicized cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. However no charges were filed against him. Independent investigation commissioned by the charity found none of the allegations of sexual misconduct can be proved beyond any question, but that cumulative evidence was extensive.
He also left the Franciscans, but retained his priestly faculties. He retired to a small town in upstate New York.
Philip Francis Berrigan (October 5, 1923 – December 6, 2002) was an American peace activist and Catholic priest with the Josephites. He engaged in nonviolent, civil disobedience in the cause of peace and nuclear disarmament and was often arrested.In 1973, he married a former nun, Elizabeth McAlister both were subsequently excommunicated by the Catholic Church before being reinstated. For eleven years of their 29-year marriage they were separated by one or both serving time in prison.