The daughter of famous American writer Nathaniel Hawthorn—who was born, literally, in the backyard of my parish in Salem, Mass.—has a cause for canonization going. Rose Hawthorn, a convert from Anglicanism, founded an order of nuns in New York who still care for cancer patients. It seems the author of “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of Seven Gables” himself flirted with crossing the Tiber.
