Sainthood for Dorothy Day - NYTimes.com Re "In Hero of the Catholic Left, a Conservative Cardinal Sees a Saint" (front page, Nov. 27): Dorothy Day elected not only poverty but also orthodoxy, and when she did challenge her church, it was usually because it had departed from its principles, particularly when they ran up against her staunch pacifism. Her precedents were as varied as Catherine of Siena and Margery Kempe, both medieval religious women, and her sanctity, like theirs, lay at least as much in the courage and strength of her life as in the vigor of her vision, and in her refusal to compromise with her times. But it is a religious, not only political, vision that moved her, and it is that which effectively set her apart from a purely political agenda, and engages us still today. The writer is a professor of English at Georgetown University.