Mother Cabrini: First U.S. citizen canonized a saint dedicated life to New York’s Italian immigrants June 6, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary, Saints The heroic love of God and neighbor that motivated her was formally recognized in 1946 when Frances Cabrini was declared a saint. That made her the first U.S. citizen to be canonized — even though she remained, in the words of a historian, “Italian … to the very marrow of her bones.”
Father McGivney: Founder’s desire for charity built Knights of Columbus’ success May 30, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary, Knights of Columbus In many ways, Father Michael J. McGivney was just one more of that band of hardworking Irish-American priests who spent themselves building up the church in America in the latter years of the 19th century. But in one truly extraordinary respect, he was unique: Before he was 30, Father McGivney had founded what was to become the largest Catholic men’s organization in the world: the Knights of Columbus.
Flannery O’Connor: Southern writer made Catholic vision ‘apparent by shock’ May 23, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary Flannery O’Connor was not an evangelist. She was an artist, one of the most gifted American fiction writers of the 20th century. But a profoundly Catholic theological vision informs her art, giving her stories resonance and depth that sound deep — and sometimes deeply disturbing — spiritual chords.
Cardinal Gibbons: Baltimore’s effective advocate for American Catholicism’s Americanization May 16, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary In a long, fruitful career as leader of the American hierarchy, Cardinal Gibbons combined diplomacy, patriotism and a canny understanding of human nature in a manner that made him the most effective advocate before or since of the Americanization of American Catholicism. To him more than anyone, the Catholic Church owes both the advantages and the unintended consequences of assimilation into American secular culture.
Dorothy Day: Catholic Worker founder pioneered a faith-based alternative to secularist progressivism May 9, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary Dorothy Day was co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement and longtime editor of the penny-a-copy newspaper of the same name. From the mid-1930s to the early 1980s, she preached radical Christianity and no less radical social activism to a sometimes appreciative, sometimes puzzled, sometimes angry audience of American Catholics.
Father John Courtney Murray: Advocate for cooperation between church, state May 2, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary By all odds, the distinguished intellectual landmark in the project of integrating Catholicism and Americanism is “We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition,” a collection of essays published in 1960 by the theologian Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray.
Cardinal Francis Spellman: A dramatic, hard-fought rise to the top April 25, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary Many cardinals have had books written about them, but few have become the fictionalized heroes of best-selling novels. Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, archbishop of New York from 1939 to 1967, was one — possibly the only one.
New York Gov. Al Smith: Perseverance in both political endeavors, faith April 18, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary To President Franklin Roosevelt, he was the “Happy Warrior.” To suspicious Protestants, he was a pawn of the pope. Amid such conflicting views as these, the remarkable political career of Al Smith was forged.
Orestes Brownson: A spiritual seeker turned prominent Catholic intellectual ‘bomb-thrower’ April 11, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary By the end of his life, Orestes Brownson, who was the most distinguished American Catholic public intellectual of the 19th century, had become a ferocious critic of the Americanist path that most of his fellow Catholics had chosen.
Father Isaac Hecker: Father of American evangelization April 4, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary, Evangelization His great goal was the conversion of Protestant America to Catholicism, something he was convinced could happen. After all, he said, in the United States “true religion will find a reception it has in vain looked for elsewhere.”
Maryland’s Archbishop John Carroll: A Catholic bridge-builder in a fledgling nation March 28, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary, Feature A member of a wealthy and respected Catholic family, with excellent contacts among America’s political and social elite, Archbishop Carroll proved notably adept at building bridges with the non-Catholic world in a career spanning more than three decades.
Archbishop John Hughes: A new breed of bishop for the 19th century March 21, 2026By Russell Shaw OSV News Filed Under: America's 250th anniversary, Commentary John Hughes reigned — the word fits his style — as Archbishop of New York from December 1842 until his death in January 1864. In that time he established himself in the eyes of his fellow Americans as a Catholic bishop unlike any they’d seen up to then.
