Servant

For over five hours as over a thousand people filed past the casket of an elderly lady at Loyola Chapel in Denver. It was June 9, 1918. They came to pay their respects to Julia Greeley, who was a servant. Born into slavery in Hannibal, Missouri, she was a servant, or domestic worker, first in Missouri and later in the Denver area where she moved in or about 1878. It was through her domestic role in the household of Governor William and Julia Gilpin that she first learned about the Catholic faith from Mrs. Gilpin. Julia Greeley was baptized in the Catholic faith in 1880. She would go through trying times in her life, to which she responded with charity. Taking her servant duties to a whole other level in helping the poor in Denver, she has become recognized in Denver as the "Angel of Charity" and she is also known by the Catholic Church as a Servant of God. This is a summary of her remarkable story of this little known former slave.

Only known photo of Julia Greeley
pictured with Marjorie Urquhart
source: Wikipedia

It is unknown what year Julia was born, but most sources place it somewhere between 1833 and 1848. There are few records of births of those born into slavery such as Julia Greeley was near Hannibal, Missouri. But, for her remarkable efforts she could well have been lost to history. She lost sight in one of her eyes, when, as a young girl of about three or four she got between a slave master and her mother when her mother. Her mother was about the be struck by the whip of the slave master, but the whip instead struck Julia's eye. For the remainder of her life tear fluid would constantly drip from damaged right eye. She was freed by the Missouri Emancipation Proclamation (Missouri was not part of the Confederacy and therefore not subject to President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation),  in 1865, and was employed by the Robinson family until her move to Denver in 1878. No one seems to know what caused William Gilpin to turn against Julia Greeley and later his wife, but a contentious filing for divorce from is wife brought Julia Greeley into the case as he referred to his wife as bringing in a "lewd and unprincipled woman" (ie Julia Greeley) into the house. Due to this she had trouble finding employment until she was exonerated at the divorce trial.

Due to the divorce trial of her friend, Mrs. Gilpin Julia became focused on Jesus, and took special devotion to Jesus of the Sacred Heart. Her death on June 7, 1918 was on the Feast day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She attended mass daily, at Sacred Heart Church in Denver. She was present in the 1879 founding of the church. It was likely at Sacred Heart Church, where she was baptized, that she first came into contact with the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The coincidence here, is that the book club I am completed reading on Tuesday, Feb 18, 2025, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis' encyclical (He loved us) on the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ. The encyclical's conclusion notes the following (paragraph 217): "The present document can help us see that the teaching of the social Encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home." (Bold by blog author) Julia Greeley understood this, and I have to think that being impoverished herself, she would well understand what Francis says in paragraph 218:  

In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.

It was her love of Christ that drove Julia to clean Sacred Heart church to earn money to pay the rent at the boarding house at which she lived. It is said she earned about $10 or $12 a month (about $380 a month in today's valuation). In addition to her work at the church she did other odd jobs. With this little money she found enough to live and to help others. She often found herself the victim of charity fraud schemes, but she felt it better to give than to be too careful and deny assistance to a person in need. She well took to heart and by deed the Gospel passage in Matthew: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).

Present day photo of what was boarding house
where Julia Greeley lived. Walnut St. Denver, CO
She lived in the boarding house from 1903-1916
Google maps

The Colorado Encyclopedia indicates that Julia loved and took care of varied children. In one exchange she predicted that a woman, said to not be able to bear another child, had a child the following year.  Julia is in the top image of this blog post with that child. The Colorado Encyclopedia, had this to say: 

One day in 1914, Mrs. Agnes Urquhart asked Julia to mop her floor. Noticing religious pictures on the walls, Greeley asked if the Urquharts were Catholic. When Mrs. Urquhart said yes, Julia asked where the children were. There had only been one child, Mrs. Urquhart told her, and he had died from an inability to digest food. Mrs. Urquhart was unable to have any more children. Julia told Mrs. Urquhart that there would be “a little white angel running around the house. I will pray and you will see.”

Julia experienced many trials in her life, from the psychological torture of Gov Gilpen, to being half blind, crippled due to severe arthritis in most of her limbs and extremities, and being a black woman she still found herself ministering to the poor in Denver, and at 98% white at the time, many of the poor she assisted were white. Because poor whites could lose any semblance of respectability if found to be helped by an African-American, she did so at night. She would venture out with food, and is known to have carried a mattress on her back for a family in need. She also delivered coal and other fuel. Even though she lacked much money herself, she gave to the poor, and even took up collections to benefit them. 

Perhaps the most sorrowful thing I have read about Julia Greeley is that she thought when she got to heaven she would be white. This clearly shows the discrimination she must have gone though as a black woman in the US and a former slave. This poor, illiterate, disabled woman lived a life of virtue. As per the Julia Greeley Home post "the designation 'Servant of God' means that the Catholic authorities in Rome have determined that a preliminary investigation into her life has revealed her to have lived a 'heroic' life until her death in Denver on June 7, 1918. It means the Church has determined that Julia followed the will of God to an amazing degree, even beyond what a 'good' and virtuous person would be expected to do." An issue with her being illiterate there is a lack of records detailing her life or writings. Lack of historical records added to the complexity of her situation.

Every first Friday of the month she made a 22 mile trip on foot to distribute Sacred Heart literature to the varied firehouses in Denver. Every firefighter in the city knew who Julia was. They gave her enough votes (ten cents a vote) to win a beauty contest and earn the $350 which she used to provide for the poor. She purchased the leaflet copies herself, but she could not read, write or count. 

For thirty years or more she undertook many of the corporal works of mercy, fed the hungry, provided clothes and fuel to those in need, visited the ill, and provided spiritual encouragement. She walked around with her little red wagon picking up discarded items such doll to repair to give to a poor child, to find scraps of wood for fuel. Fr Burkey is quoted in an article saying: “Her charity was so great that only God knows its extent. She was constantly visiting the poor and giving them assistance from her own slender means. When she found their needs so great that she could not help them with her own goods, she begged for them. Her charity was as delicate as it was great."

While I recalled hearing about Julia Greeley before, a recent article I read last Sunday made a comparison of this Catholic convert to more famous Catholic convert--Vice President JD Vance and his recent comments on immigration. Pope Francis took issue with Vance's take on the order of love, and the administration's general immigration actions. Julia Greeley showed an expansive love to those outside her inner circle of friends. Even though she herself was in poverty, and at times needed assistance, she helped the impoverished.

Julia Greeley shows one need not be a person of means to help others. In Julia's case ,perhaps in recognizing her own poverty, she felt she could best help others. Pope Francis' encyclical Dilext Nos quotes a number of Catholic saints and their devotion to the Sacred Heart. We can pray that perhaps one day Julia Greeley will be added to the saints who had a devotion to the Sacred Heart. Julia Greeley born as a slave in the lowest station of life, worked as a servant, and now has the title Servant of God. Hopefully, she will have intervened to have the necessary miracles to reach sainthood. Julia Greeley was an ordinary person who did ordinary acts of kindness and charity, but with great love and devotion, that is what set her apart, that is how she became a true and faithful servant.