Will the Catholic Church canonise a left-wing activist?

Hundreds of people gathered at St Patrick's Cathedral, New York, to celebrate an important moment for Catholics in the city. Cardinal Timothy Dolan delivered a homily on the life of one of their own, Dorothy Day, a native New Yorker and anarchist writer and activist who died in 1980.

The sermon last month represented the end of a 20-year inquiry by the Archdiocese of New York on whether Day should receive sainthood, a question the Vatican will ultimately decide.

Many of her admirers, including her granddaughter, had hoped Dolan would talk about her commitment to social justice for the poor and the oppressed and her opposition to war and capitalism. In 1933, Day – often described as both politically radical and theologically orthodox – founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which remains active around the world in the form of Catholic Worker houses, where members live for free and provide services to the poor.

But in his sermon, Dolan described Day’s “far from sinless life”.

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“She had done quite a bit of experimenting and drifting, and she’d be the first to admit her promiscuity,” the cardinal continued. “But she kept detecting an emptiness, a searching in her life. And after a lot of prayer and study, that led in 1925 to her baptism as a Catholic.”

'Don't call me a saint,' she said in one frequently cited quip. 'I don't want to be dismissed that easily'

His remarks skimmed over her push to change policies that affected the poor and her political beliefs – adding fuel to the long-standing anxiety among Catholic Workers that the Catholic hierarchy may dilute or obscure her message even as it considers elevating her.

After Mass, Martha Hennessy, Day's granddaughter, was distraught. "He has reduced her to 'she lived a life of sexual promiscuity, and she dabbled in communism,'" she said. "What worse enemy could we have, saying those things about her?" Hennessy is active in the movement and did a reading at the Mass. "We have got to focus on her policies. We have got to focus on her practices."

Day would be the first New Yorker made a saint since 19th-century educator Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1975.

But what, Day’s supporters have asked, is the cost of sainthood? They question whether Day would have even wanted the designation.

Indeed, Day often reacted negatively when people praised her as saintlike.

"Don't call me a saint," she said in one frequently cited quip. "I don't want to be dismissed that easily." – This article originally appeared in The New York Times