Cora Evans, a Search That Led to Christ

Servant of God Cora Evans

On December 9, 1934, Cora Evans lay ill in her home in Ogden, Utah. Across the room, a radio began broadcasting The Catholic Hour. Too sick to get up and change the station, she listened to Monsignor Duane Hunt speak about the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Catholic faith. What she heard challenged the negative accounts of Catholicism she had learned growing up. When she recovered, she went to Saint Joseph Catholic Church with questions.

Cora had been born on July 9, 1904, in Midvale, Utah, and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1924, she married Maclellan, known as Mack, Evans. She later recalled that their temple marriage ceremony had left her troubled about her childhood faith and prompted a long religious search.

During those years, Cora and Mack had three children. Their son Bobby died at ten months old, deepening her search for consolation. Her eventual inquiries at Saint Joseph’s led to instruction and discussions about Catholic teaching. On March 30, 1935, she was baptized into the Catholic Church. The following day, she received her first Holy Communion. Mack and their daughters, LaVonne and Dorothy, became Catholics a few months later. Cora subsequently invited others from her former faith to learn about Catholicism.

The family moved to Southern California in 1941. Under the guidance of her Jesuit spiritual director, Father Frank Parrish, Cora wrote extensively about experiences she understood as encounters with Christ. She reported a mission to promote the “Mystical Humanity of Christ,” encouraging awareness of Christ’s presence in ordinary daily life. Accounts associated with her cause also describe visions and the stigmata. These remain reported mystical experiences subject to the Church’s discernment.

Cora moved to Boulder Creek in 1956 and died there on March 30, 1957, exactly twenty-two years after her Catholic baptism. Recognized as a Servant of God, she remains a candidate for canonization. Her story joins the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood with a persistent search for God and a desire to help others know Christ.

For your own devotional image, click here: Maryvale Catholic Press