Canceled: Twelve Catholic Heroes That History Turned Into Villains

by Steve Weidenkopf

In Canceled , historian Steve Weidenkopf (The Real Story of Catholic History) digs into some of the most controversial Catholics ever to capture the popular imagination. He looks at notorious figures like Christopher Columbus and Marie Antoinette, so associated with their presumed evils that the modern world has completely written them off—canceled them from any favorable mention or memory. And worse, the world now uses them as brushes to tar the whole Church.

Weidenkopf discovers, though, that these figures are actually victims of a concerted project of defamation, their lives twisted and misrepresented by the Church’s Enlightenment philosophers, Protestant rebels, modern secularists, and even malcontents within Catholicism.

What is official history getting wrong about Torquemada or Pius IX? Could there really be another side to the story of “Bloody” Mary Tudor? Or Guy Fawkes? Weidenkopf cuts through centuries of shady lies and viral myths (maybe you even believed them!) to get to the amazing truths about these and other maligned men and women of God.

Canceled is not a whitewash, but rather a much-needed work of correction. Skillfully challenging the anti-Catholic historical record, it comes to the defense of faithful (though hardly flawless) Catholics whose reputations have been unfairly blackened—and to the defense of the Faith with which they are forever linked.

Genres: Nonfiction, Catholic

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 21, 2025

About the author

Steve Weidenkopf is a Lecturer in Church History at the Christendom College Graduate School of Theology in Alexandria, Virginia. He has given numerous presentations and seminars on Church History, marriage and family life, human sexuality, and theology throughout the U.S. and Canada.

He served as the Director of the Office of Marriage & Family Life for the
Archdiocese of Denver (2001 - 2004) and as an advisor to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. and was an instructor at the Our Lady of the New Advent Catechetical Institute.

Steve is a member of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East - an international academic group dedicated to the field of crusading history and is also a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.