Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazetter writes that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops unanimously endorsed Dorothy Day for sainthood. The conversation on Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement, was highlighted by personal testimony from bishops who met and worked with her:
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York presented her cause, noting at a news conference that she has faced opposition. Some right-wing Catholics have opposed her canonization because she was a fierce social critic of the American system and some left-wing Catholics have opposed her because she was very traditional in her faith, he said.
Some non-Catholic commentators have suggested that the church won’t canonize a woman who had an abortion, as she did before her conversion and later wrote of it with deep regret.
But many bishops said all of that is what makes her so appealing a saint.
“Of all the people that we need to reach out to, all the people who are hard to get at, the ones who are street people, the ones on drugs, the ones who had abortions … she was one of them,” said retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. “What a tremendous opportunity we have to say to them, you cannot only be brought back into society and into the church, you can be a saint.”
The bishops failed to approve a message on the economy, in part because the statement “ignored critical cause of poverty”:
The more than 200 bishops “looked for the best words and way to address [economic woes] in terms of a statement. … But whatever we have to say on the economy has to be clearly stated in action. And Dorothy Day is a perfect example of that,” said Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif.