Kathleen Sprows Cummings, "A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American" (UNC Press, 2019

UNC Press Presents Podcast · Dec 17, 2022 · 41m

In A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Kathleen Sprows Cummings asks what drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest for an American saint? A home-grown saint, she argues, would serve as a mediator between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans.

Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha…