On April 3, 2008, an article appeared in the Yale Daily News, entitled: “Sainthood’s Next Stop: New Haven?” The writer was Martine Powers and her subject was the life of Father Michael J. McGivney. “McGivney,” she wrote, “was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1852, [and] was a parish priest at Saint Mary’s Church.” His ministry at Saint Mary’s was primarily among New Haven’s working class. During his tenure, he founded a local Catholic fraternity that provided financial support to the widows and children of men killed by disease or work-related accidents, which, as Powers noted, was a “precursor to modern-day life insurance.” The local Catholic fraternity Fr. McGivney founded was the Knights of Columbus, which is still headquartered in New Haven.

At the time of Powers’ writing, Fr. McGivney’s cause for sainthood had taken an important step forward when Pope Benedict XVI officially titled McGivney a “Venerable Servant of God.” Fr. McGivney’s cause advanced one more step earlier this year, when Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to his intercession, involving a mother whose pregnancy was threatened by a medical condition in 2015, thereby clearing the way for his beatification. As Archbishop Lori of Baltimore put it, “Fr. McGivney was a Pope Francis priest before there was a Pope Francis.” And, as The Father Michael J. McGivney Guild notes, “he accompanied people from all walks of life in their suffering and uncertainty.” For example, he accompanied a young, twenty-one-year-old man who was condemned to be hung for shooting and killing a police officer while drunk. There at the gallows, upon the scaffold, McGivney prayed for the young man and blessed him.

Fr. McGivney also lived and ministered in a time of pandemic, something that we all are experiencing now. As Sandra E. Garcia notes in an article entitled: “Knights of Columbus Founder, Who Died in a Pandemic, Moves Closer to Sainthood,” which appeared in the New York Times in May of this year, Fr. McGivney “died of pneumonia in 1890 at the end of the so-called Russian flu pandemic. New research suggests that the global pandemic, which started in 1889 and lasted two years, was caused by a coronavirus not unlike the one responsible for the current pandemic.”

Today, Fr. McGivney’s body lies in a sarcophagus at Saint Mary’s—and pilgrims from all over come there to pray for his intercession.

This Saturday, a Mass of Beatification will be celebrated at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Hartford, with His Eminence, Joseph W. Tobin, the Cardinal Archbishop of Newark presiding. Then he’ll be “Blessed Michael J. McGivney.” There’s still one more step. For canonization, a miracle must take place after the beatification ceremony: a sign of God’s final seal of approval on the Church’s proclamation that the candidate is in heaven with God. As Powers wrote back in 2008, “if McGivney is canonized by the pope, he will become the first American-born parish priest to attain sainthood.”

This is a pretty big deal. We have a potential saint in our own neighborhood! Think about that next time you walk—or run—by Saint Mary’s on Hillhouse Avenue. And when you can, perhaps stop in and say a prayer.

One interesting note: Martine Powers graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in African American Studies. Having pursued a career in journalism, she wrote for The Boston Globe and now hosts a podcast for The Washington Post.