The Gospel of Peace

Fr. John Hugo (1911-1985) was a priest from the Diocese of Pittsburgh who spent most of his life giving inspiring retreats based on those that he had participated while still a young priest in the 1930s. Those retreats, which were attended by over 6000 priests, were given by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture S. J. The retreats were done in the Ignatian way, with the proper length of time, and they got to the real roots of Christian living. The retreats given by Fr. Lacouture were life-changing for the attendees.
Fr. Hugo became a disciple of Fr. Lacouture in the sense that he experienced the fruits and saw the necessity of the retreat for Catholic Americans. He determined to continue that work as part of his priestly vocation. Fr. Hugo became the spiritual advisor of Dorothy Day (and the Catholic Worker Movement) who took the retreat more than twenty times during her life.
This book, The Gospel of Peace, is one fruit of that work, and it was very controversial at the time of its publication in 1943. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is always controversial because it is “out of step” with the world.