Three Scholars Awarded 2025-2026 Blessed Solanus Casey Essay Prize
DETROIT - The Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph has announced the winners of the 2025-2026 Blessed Solanus Casey Essay Prize, recognizing outstanding scholarship that deepens understanding of Blessed Solanus Casey's life, spirituality, and legacy. This year's competition, open to graduate students in any discipline at accredited U.S. colleges and universities, drew entries assessed on originality, grounding in primary sources, and contemporary relevance to American society and Christianity.
Unlike the inaugural 2024-2025 competition, which awarded a single prize in the Graduate Student category, this year's prize was expanded into three cash-award places: first place ($2,500), second place ($1,500), and third place ($750).
First place went to Kaile Kilner, a lay woman pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, for her essay "Written on the Heart: Blessed Solanus Casey's Embodiment of 'Notes about Special Cases.'" Kilner's essay examines Casey's collected "Notes about Special Cases," the notebooks in which he tracked decades of encounters with the people who came to him for prayer and counsel, as a work of theological literature in its own right. Drawing on the medieval traditions of the libri vitae and libri miraculorum (books of life and books of miracles), Kilner argues that Casey's "Notes" function as a modern form of Christian memoria, a communal archive of prayer, remembrance, and healing that invites readers into Casey's own practice of intercession through their own witness and prayer. Kilner holds a Master of Arts in Publishing Media from Oxford Brookes University and a Bachelor of Arts in Arabic and International Relations from The Ohio State University, and works as an Editorial Project Coordinator at World Book in Chicago.
Second place went to Barry Mark Okeyo, a Maryknoll seminarian from Kenya pursuing a Master of Divinity at Catholic Theological Union, for his essay "From Cell to Threshold: The Novitiate Formation Program of Blessed Solanus Casey and Its Living Expression in His Pastoral Ministry." The essay centers on a largely overlooked primary source: a handwritten notebook from Casey's novitiate years containing five formation principles he titled "Means for Acquiring the Love of God," along with two supplementary resolutions, "To Preserve God's Presence." Okeyo argues, in what he contends is an entirely new thesis in Solanus Casey scholarship, that these novitiate principles were not preliminary exercises Casey later moved beyond, but became the enduring structural framework of his pastoral ministry at the monastery door across six decades. The essay draws a direct line from Casey's example to what Okeyo identifies as a contemporary crisis of disconnect between spiritual formation and pastoral formation in U.S. seminary training. Okeyo previously earned a Diploma in Philosophy from Tangaza University in Nairobi and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Nairobi.
Third place went to dr. césar a. cruz, a layman and Doctor of Ministry student at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, for his essay "The Porter and the Prisoner: Francis Solanus Casey, Israa Ja'abis and the Theology of the Door." The essay places Casey's vocation as monastery porter, a ministry exercised, quite literally, through a door, into conversation with the testimony of Israa Ja'abis, a Palestinian Muslim woman held as a political prisoner, whom cruz heard speak at a University of California, Berkeley Law School event in April 2026. Drawing on frameworks of lament, counterstory, and the Islamic concept of sabr (patient endurance), and on his own life story as an undocumented immigrant and the son of a deported mother, cruz argues that Solanus Casey's ministry at the threshold finds its most urgent contemporary meaning in the lives of those the world has shut out. cruz holds an Ed.L.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education — the first Mexican immigrant male to earn that degree — and is the co-founder and executive director of Homies Empowerment, a grassroots organization in East Oakland, California.
The winning essays were selected through blind review by a jury of clergy, religious, and lay scholars steeped in the spirituality and legacy of Blessed Solanus Casey, chaired by Rev. Edward Foley, Capuchin, vice-postulator of the Cause for Canonization of Blessed Solanus Casey. Foley is the Duns Scotus Professor Emeritus of Spirituality and Retired Professor of Liturgy and Music at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
"This year's winning essays remind us how many fresh insights remain to be drawn from the life and ministry of Blessed Solanus," said Rev. Edward Foley, Capuchin, chair of the essay prize jury. "From the formation notebook he kept as a young novice, to the notes he kept on the people who came to his door, to the door itself as a place where the excluded are received, these three essays each found fresh insights about a man many assumed had already been fully understood. That kind of scholarship is exactly what these prizes were intended to foster."
All three winners will be encouraged and assisted in publishing their essays in scholarly or other venues, with the possibility that the winning essays could eventually appear together as chapters in a book on Blessed Solanus Casey.
Blessed Solanus Casey (1870-1957), a Capuchin friar and priest of the Province of St. Joseph, is remembered for his profound trust in God, his compassionate ministry to the sick and poor, and his unwavering devotion to Jesus and the Blessed Mother. His example inspires many, drawing people closer to his message of gratitude and confidence in Divine Providence. The Solanus Casey Center in Detroit, a major pilgrimage site and location of Casey's tomb, attracts more than 100,000 visitors every year. Father Solanus was declared venerable by St. John Paul II in 1995 and beatified by Pope Francis in 2017. For more information about Father Solanus Casey, visit www.solanuscasey.org.
For more information about the Blessed Solanus Casey Essay Prizes, visit https://www.solanuscasey.org/about-blessed-solanus-casey/essay/
About the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph
The mission of the friars of the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph is one of transforming the world through reverence. Established at Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin in 1857, the Midwest Capuchins are part of an international community of friars following the rule of St. Francis of Assisi. The 125 brothers of the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph, headquartered in Detroit, serve in various ministries, including social service, schools, chaplaincy, a retreat house and parishes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Montana.
