The New York Times has a profile of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, confessor to the late Terrence Cardinal Cooke, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, perennial critic of the media's coverage of things Catholic, and well-known defender of the poor and unborn. There was a tidbit about Fr. Groeschel's involvement in the civil rights movement that I found interesting:

Probably the most beautiful and moving thing Ive been involved in was the civil rights movement, he said. It was the most interesting and creative period of my life.

Father Groeschel and a rabbi in Croton-on-Hudson had raised the money to buy the blue station wagon that Michael Schwerner was driving when he, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were kidnapped and later killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964.

Father Groeschel remembers going to a civil rights march with his friend Nate Schwerner, Michaels father, before the young men were found and Mr. Schwerners saying to him, I think they are dead.

Commenting on the way that his diverse commitments don't fit well into the usual ideological categories, Fr. Groeschel described himself as a "conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person."