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Life with Granny
By Megan Fincher
She was a strict pacifist, a practicing anarchist, a union supporter and a devoted single mother. She was also a pious convert to Catholicism, avidly reading Scripture and the lives of the saints, attending daily Mass, praying the rosary and dedicating herself as a Benedictine Oblate of St. Procopius Abbey.
To the U.S. bishops’ conference, Dorothy Day lived a life worthy of canonization, but to Martha and Kate Hennessy, she was just “Granny.” ... NEWSPAPER ONLY
Pope: Saints aren’t superheroes; they just never strayed from God
By Catholic News Service
Saints aren’t superheroes, they are regular people who just never left God’s side after encountering him and his love, Pope Francis said on the feast of All Saints. “Being a saint is not a privilege of the few, like someone getting a large inheritance. All of us have inherited through baptism the ability to become saints,” he said Nov. 1. ... NEWSPAPER ONLY
You can’t make saints with Hail Marys alone
From testimony and prayer cards to the big day in Rome, canonization is costly
By John L. Allen Jr.
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American who served as president of the Vatican bank in the 1970s and ’80s and who was a central figure in the scandals that gripped the institution in that era, was credited with saying, “You can’t run the church on Hail Marys.” As it turns out, you can’t make saints that way, either. ... NEWSPAPER ONLY
Black saints’ legacy goes back to early Christianity
By Tom Roberts
In many corners of the church in the United States, Black Catholic History Month is little-known and only incidentally observed, but the legacy of black people in the long story of Christianity traces back to the earliest eras and some of the church’s biggest names. The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus declared the month, observed during November, in 1990. It was observed widely that year with liturgies celebrating the 350th anniversary of the death of St. Martin de Porres, the only saint of African descent from the Western Hemisphere. ... NEWSPAPER ONLY
Healed and drafted into a cosmic battle
By Melissa Musick Nussbaum
We’re accustomed to seeing the saints with their attributes (signifying characteristics) depicted in paintings and stained glass. But do you ever wonder how they would respond to the images? Peter of Verona — who is almost always shown with a hatchet protruding from his skull — might protest, “I had a life before my death.” Would Lucy, shown a picture of herself carrying her own eyeballs on a tray, look away? ... NEWSPAPER ONLY
Protestants avoid the saint-naming business
By Bill Tammeus
At the end of this paragraph I will list all of the Protestant saints in history: Yeah. Zero. We don’t do saints. Well, that’s not exactly true. We Protestants often call every member of our congregations saints. ... NEWSPAPER ONLY