A saint of our own : how the quest for a holy hero helped Catholics become American
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"What drove American Catholics in their long and arduous quest, full of twists and turns across more than a century, to win an American-born saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints left many feeling spiritually unmoored and disrespected - to be able to look at the same American scenes upon which a saint had gazed would be a joy and privilege, certainly. But believers also had another reason for cultivating homegrown holiness, contends Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this ... chronicle of saint-making in America, where canonization was about holiness but never only about holiness"--,Provided by publisher.