Saint G.K. Chesterton? Some delight, others worry about effort to canonize writer
Christians and Jews are mounting campaigns for and against a path to sainthood for British writer G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), one of the world’s best-known Catholic converts.
Roman Catholic Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, where Chesterton lived and worked, has ordered an examination of Chesterton’s life — the first step in what is likely to be a long and unpredictable process toward canonization.
Chesterton’s many admirers delighted in the news.
“There is a growing devotion to this life-changing writer,” said Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, who has pushed the church to explore a formal declaration of sainthood for a man he called “a maker of converts.”...