About the Author

Joe Moreshead is a native of Maine and a former seminarian for the diocese of Portland. He is a graduate of Cheverus High School and Fordham University. Joe first heard about Fr. Rale in a middle school social studies class and was bothered by the fact that Fr. Rale seemed to get an unfair treatment into the English accounts of the conflict. Later as he read more about the life of Fr. Rale, he found out that many people since Fr. Rale’s death (including his contemporaries) considered him a martyr and a holy pastor.

Since many of the secular sources on Fr. Rale seemed unable to understand things like faith, the salvation of souls, or zeal for Christ, Joe set out to go through the primary sources himself. The hope was that in doing so, he could give an account of Fr. Rale from the inside, from the perspective of a person who also lived according to St. Ignatius’ spirituality and believed in the Catholic faith as traditionally understood. Having done so, many of the straw man arguments put forward against Fr. Rale began to fall. It became apparent that Fr. Rale was motivated by faith and love for souls rather than personal gain or politics as some have alleged. It was a real possibility that he was indeed a martyr, just as his contemporaries believed him to be.

Between 2017 and 2019, Joe wrote reflections for an annual Fr. Rale pilgrimage in Madison, Maine. These pilgrimage garnered attention from a wide variety of people, from native Americans of the Penobscot Nation, to local history buffs, to local priests and Jesuits. It is these people for whom this website is named, who from all different walks of life have taken an interest in Fr. Rale and labored to make his story known.