...may have its first saint soon (my emphasis):
...At a special church service on Thursday night, Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn opened what is known as a “canonical inquiry” into the cause of sainthood for a Brooklyn priest, Msgr. Bernard J. Quinn.
Monsignor Quinn, who died in 1940 at age 52, championed racial equality at a time when discrimination against blacks was ubiquitous in America, even inside the Catholic Church. In the Depression-era heyday of the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist radio broadcasts of the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, Monsignor Quinn encountered sharp resistance from some fellow priests when he proposed ministering to Brooklyn’s growing population of blacks, many of them fleeing the Jim Crow South or migrating from the poor Caribbean countries.
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The process of canonization can take a long time. The inquiry on behalf of another New Yorker, Cardinal Terence J. Cooke, has been going on since 1984. Pierre Toussaint, the 19th-century Haitian abolitionist, former slave and devout Catholic — who, like Cooke, has been championed by the Archdiocese of New York — has been in line since 1943.
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But the inquiry on behalf of Monsignor Quinn is the first the Brooklyn diocese, which encompasses that borough and Queens, has started since its creation in 1853, according to the diocese’s spokesman, Msgr. Kieran E. Harrington.
Its purpose is to scour the record of the candidate’s priesthood to determine whether he was morally fit for sainthood and whether his ministry attracted many new people to the church.
If Monsignor Quinn’s record passes those tests, the diocese will have to present evidence of at least two miracles attributed to him after his death. The process of verifying such miracles is conducted by a Vatican delegation. The pope makes the final decision on whether to canonize, and when.
Two miracles? What century are we living in? Is all this really necessary? Can't we just remember this guy as a really, really good priest?
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