Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register
February 13, 2026
The widespread joy that earlier this week greeted the news of the upcoming beatification of the famous Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen shows us just how some lives of heroic virtue impact the multitudes.
There are others, however, whose stories, witness, and even martyrdom can somehow remain known. That seems to be the case with Blessed James Miller, whose holy life vies with St. Mother Theodore Guerin’s for the most obscure among their fellow American Catholic home team.
In Blessed James’ case, it makes little sense, because his life ought to be the stuff of movies. He was a farm boy born in the heartland, a football coach, a builder, teacher, missionary and heroic martyr. Yet most Catholic daily Mass-goers wouldn’t even recognize his name and few pulpits in our country today will mention him.
Perhaps the reason why he remains so little known is because he was a religious brother, the vocation that gets the least attention in the Church today. Regardless, as we celebrate his feast today,
marking the 44th anniversary of his martyrdom in Guatemala, it’s fitting for all of us to get to know him better, perhaps share his story with others, and pray through his intercession for the many virtues, especially faith and courage, his life exudes.
Born in 1944 and raised on a dairy and chicken farm in Custer, Wisconsin, James Miller learned early the habits that would later define his sanctity: discipline, endurance, responsibility, and humble service. He prayed at home, worked hard, desired to be a priest, and dreamed of putting the great commission into practice: as a teenager, he read the encyclopedia cover to cover, striving to get to know foreign lands where he hoped one day to bring the Gospel.
Attending Pacelli High School in Stevens Point, he got to know the Brothers of Christian Schools and quickly saw that God was calling him to be one of them. At 15, he entered the juniorate. Three years later, he became a postulant and then novice. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish at St. Mary’s University in Winona, hoping to share in the Brothers’ missions in Latin America.
Those who knew him at the time said he was a “common, good guy,” “very human,” “a man of union and communion,” who had the “gift of gab,” a perpetual smile, a boisterous and infectious laugh, and a “deep faith and love for his religious vocation.” They also said he was perpetually late to prayers and class, something that Cardinal José Luis Lacunza of Panama, who beatified him in 2019 in Guatemala, joked had prepared him very well for service in Latin America, “where punctuality is not numbered among our virtues!”
His first teaching assignment was at Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, teaching Spanish, English and religion. He also supervised the maintenance of the school, something that earned him the nickname “Brother Fix-It.” He also coached football. At 6’2” and 220 pounds, he not only had the physique of a tight end but was easily capable of being a “big brother” to students and faculty both.
After a fellow Christian Brother got sick at the Brothers’ school in Bluefield, Nicaragua, “Hermano Santiago” was sent to replace him. He taught sixth grade, then high school, while also repairing the Brother’s residence, running a bookstore and starting a soccer team.
Then he was transferred to Puerto Cabezas and named director of the school. There he not only supervised but got his hands dirty building an industrial arts complex, an auditorium and science center, taught, founded a volunteer fire department and served as janitor, fixing the plumbing, cleaning the bathrooms and sweeping the floor. Enrollment grew from 300 to 800 students. His practical know-how won the attention of the Somoza Government, who contracted him to build ten more schools in the rural region so that the children of the area would have a chance for an education.
When the Sandinistas came to power, he was put on a list of people to be “dealt with,” because he had erected schools for the Somoza government. His superiors decided to summon him back to Cretin High School in Minnesota. St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle, the founder of the Brothers of Christian Schools, had once told his spiritual sons, “Your zeal must go so far that you are ready to give your life, so dear to you are the children entrusted to you,” and Hermano Santiago took his founder’s instruction to heart. He worried that the people of Puerto Cabezas would see his departure as an act of cowardice and so he wrote them telling them he would return, but he never got his wish.
After two years of asking to return to Latin America, his superiors sent him to their Mission in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, to teach and serve as sub-director at the Indigenous House School and work at the Indian Center, training indigenous Mayans in agricultural techniques, leadership skills and basic educational subjects. His new assignment was as dangerous as his previous one. The Guatemalan government regularly conscripted into military service indigenous students, even though students were exempt by law. Hermano Santiago and his fellow Christian Brothers’ repeatedly went to present documentation to liberate their students, something which those in the government resented. Word quickly spread that members of the G-2 death squad were looking for the sub-director.
Cardinal José Luis Lacunza would later explain at his beatification why both the Nicaraguan and Guatemalan regimes feared him: “There is nothing that bothers totalitarianisms more than education,” because education forms conscience, dignity and freedom. And if education threatens tyrannies, the Gospel threatens it even more.
Brother James was aware of the threats. He wrote his sister a month before he died, “One of two frightening things could happen to me in Guatemala: I could be kidnapped, tortured and killed or I could simply be gunned down.” He added, however, “You can’t waste your energies worrying about what might happen. If it happens, it happens.” To others, to lighten the mood, the jocular religious stated, “I never thought I could pray with such fervor when I go to bed!” On a more serious note, he added, “I place my life in [God’s] Providence. I place my trust in Him.”
On February 13, 1982, after returning from a picnic with students, Brother Fix-It climbed a ladder to fix a broken lamp outside the school. At 4:15 p.m., a car sped past. Four hooded men opened fire with automatic weapons. Seven bullets tore through his neck and chest. Children watched from the windows as their teacher, janitor, coach and spiritual father fell from the ladder, murdered before their eyes. He was 37.
He died doing what he had always done: trying to make the light of Christ shine among students in the darkness of ignorance and masked gunmen caught in the night of murderous evil. Cardinal Lacunza said he gave his life in witness of Christ’s great commission to teach all nations and was an icon of Christ the Teacher who gave his life in witness to the truth.
Brother James’ funeral was held first in Huehuetenango and then in St. Paul, Minnesota, before he was buried in Ellis, Wisconsin, at St. Martin Cemetery, just outside the family farm in the Diocese of La Crosse.
During his life, Brother James loved to do “very quietly, behind the scenes,” and “never asked for recognition,” one of his fellow LaSallians testified. With his beatification, all that he did the Church has brought into the foreground, giving him the most important acknowledgment a human being can receive. His beatification shows that the Lord continues to exalt the humble and that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven remain those who keep the faith and teach others to do the same (Lk 14:11; Mt 5:19).
As the Church universal has exalted him, it’s time for American Catholics to do the same, through getting to know him, seeking to imitate his virtues and priorities, and making him a celestial “Brother Fix-It” by invoking his intercession for things big and small. He could easily be invoked as a patron or co-patron of football and soccer coaches, construction workers and custodians, teachers and principals, those learning foreign languages, farmers, missionaries or more. Men in particular should be urged to grow in devotion him, because he is among the manliest Americans in the eternal hall of fame.
The Church in America could much profit from this increased devotion, because she must learn anew how to form young men in not just virtue but heroic virtue, so that like Blessed James, they may join the team he coached, embrace the full adventure of the Christian life, dedicate their talents and lives in faithful service of Christ to the end, even, if God wills it, to the shedding of blood.
This a particular intention we could ask “Blessed Fix-it” to address.