Will an American pope mean a wave of new American saints?

Here are a few of the many Americans whose causes could be fast-tracked under the first American pope.

The announcement of a new pope is often followed by canonizations of saints from the pope’s home country - either because the new pontiff has a personal affinity for a particular individual whose cause for canonization is open, or because the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints moves a little more quickly in processing those causes.

There are dozens of Americans currently at various stages in the canonization process. And Leo XIV is relatively young and apparently healthy. So it’s possible that he could canonize a number of new American saints.

Here are a few of the many Americans whose causes could be fast-tracked under the first American pope:

Blessed Fr. Solanus Casey, O.F.M. Cap.

​​Solanus Casey. Courtesy of the Capuchin Province of St. Joseph.

Born in 1870 in Wisconsin, Casey became an Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He was ordained in 1904 as a simplex priest, unable to preach at Mass or hear confessions because he performed poorly in his studies. He served in several friaries in New York and Detroit, where he worked as a porter. The friar was renowned for his humility, cheerfulness, and simplicity, but also for the miraculous healings that were frequently attributed to him during his life. He also earned a reputation for his ability to tame the friars’ bees, for his deep love of prayer before the Eucharist, and for his attachment to the violin, which he reportedly played with great love but little skill. Casey died in 1957. He was beatified in 2017.

Servant of God Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day. Public domain.

Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Dorothy Day was passionate about social justice from a young age. As a young adult, she wrote for socialist journals, became involved with communist and anarchist groups, and lived a bohemian lifestyle. In 1920, she had an abortion, which she later described as “the great tragedy” of her life. A growing interest in Catholicism eventually led Day to be received into the Catholic Church in 1927. She went on to become the cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933. In the years that followed, she helped establish soup kitchens, Catholic Worker houses, and the Catholic Worker newspaper. Day was a staunch pacifist and continued her social justice advocacy, now informed by her Catholic faith. She died in 1980.

Her canonization cause was opened in 2000, and in 2012, the USCCB made a consultative vote to move her cause forward.

Venerable Fr. Augustus Tolton

Augustus Tolton. Public domain.

Tolton was born into slavery in Missouri in 1854. He – along with his mother and two siblings – escaped slavery by crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois when he was a child. Tolton grew up with a strong devotion to his faith, but American seminaries at the time were unwilling to admit Black men. As a result, he attended seminary and was ordained in Rome, becoming the first African American priest in 1886. He returned to Illinois, where he served at several parishes. He was known for his eloquent preaching and his perseverance in the face of the racism he continued to experience at times during his priestly ministry. Tolton died of heat stroke at the age of 43. The opening of his cause for canonization was announced in 2010.

In 2019, Pope Francis declared that Tolton had lived a life of heroic virtue, giving him the title “Venerable.”

Blessed Fr. Stanley Rother

Fr. Stanley Rother. Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

Born in Oklahoma, Rother was ordained a priest in 1963. After five years of parish work in Oklahoma, he volunteered to join a mission in Guatemala. There, Rother learned the local language and ministered to the poor and sick. He founded a hospital and helped the local people with their crops. When the Catholic Church became caught in the middle of a civil war in Guatemala, Rother refused to leave the country, even when he was told that his name was on a death list. “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger,” he wrote at the time. In 1981, Rother was shot and killed when three masked gunmen broke into the rectory where he lived in the middle of the night.

Rother was beatified by Pope Francis in 2017.

Adele Brise

Adele Brise. Credit: The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion.

Born in 1831 in Belgium, Brise immigrated to Wisconsin with her family. In October 1859, Brise experienced a series of three visions of a beautiful lady dressed in white. The woman said she was the Queen of Heaven and asked Brise to pray for the conversion of sinners and to teach the local children about the Catholic faith. At that time in Wisconsin, there were few opportunities for religious instruction for children in the local Catholic community. For seven years, Brise traveled house-to-house throughout the Green Bay Peninsula, offering religious lessons to the children of local families. She later established a school and founded the Sisters of Good Help. The site of the apparitions – the first approved Marian apparitions in the United States – is today known as the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion.

The process to open Brise’s cause for canonization is currently underway.

Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Public domain.

The beloved American bishop and media personality was known for his popular radio show and prime time television spot in the 1950s. Sheen was scheduled for a 2019 beatification when plans came to a screeching halt just weeks before the beatification Mass. It was later reported that the local bishop wanted to ensure that a New York attorney general investigation into past handling of sex abuse cases in the Diocese of Rochester would not implicate Sheen. That investigation is still ongoing, leaving the beatification delayed indefinitely. This was not the first setback in Sheen’s cause: before the 2019 pause, the New York archdiocese and Diocese of Peoria were involved in a five-year legal battle over Sheen’s mortal remains. Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria has recently said that he will petition Pope Leo to move Sheen’s cause forward.

Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman

A Catholic convert, civil rights activist, and teacher, Bowman became the first African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in 1953. She is particularly remembered for an address she gave to the USCCB on Black Catholic spirituality in 1989. “What does it mean to be Black and Catholic? It means that I come to my Church fully functioning…I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African-American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility - as gifts to the Church,” she said in that address. As a religious sister, Bowman was known for her joy, energy, and beautiful singing voice. She died in 1990. Her sainthood cause was open in 2018, and that same year, the USCCB unanimously voted to move forward with her cause.

Servant of God Fr. Bill Atkinson

Fr. Bill Atkinson’s first Mass. Courtesy photo.

A fellow Augustinian and contemporary of Pope Leo’s, Atkinson was born in 1946. As a novice with the Augustinians in upstate New York, he was in a toboggan accident that broke his neck and severely damaged his spinal cord. Though he was expected to die, he survived, but was paralyzed from the neck down. Atkinson still felt called to become a priest, but canonical irregularities stood in his way. He appealed to the Vatican, saying that he felt God calling him to be “closely conformed to his own cross.” The pope granted a dispensation, and in 1973, Atkinson became the first quadriplegic man to be ordained a priest. He was known for his humor and his humility until his death in 2006.

His cause for canonization was opened in 2017.

Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk

Nicholas Black Elk with his wife and daughter. Public domain.

Born in 1863, Black Elk was a Lakota mystic in present-day Wyoming. He experienced visions as a young child and became a respected medicine man. He fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and toured both England and the United States with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. He was injured in the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. Two years later, he married a Catholic woman. In 1904, Black Elk converted, and he became a respected catechist for the Lakota people. He memorized Scripture and had a devotion to the rosary. He was known for weaving together the Catholic faith and the Lakota way of life.

Black Elk died in 1950, and his canonization cause was opened in 2017.