Cummings's fascinating work gives a detailed account of how Catholics in the United States sought to have a saint of their own, and how studying this story can tell us a lot about American Catholics themselves and their place in America. US Catholics, from the beginning of the republic, always faced challenges to their status as Americans. Nativist Protestants challenged their loyalty to the United States, attacking them as minions of a foreign pope. Catholic clergy, religious and laity developed various strategies to deal with this hostility and challenge to their ‘Americanness’, but one of those ways was to seek an American saint. Cummings then takes us, somewhat chronologically, through those efforts from the late nineteenth century to the present, highlighting along the way that canonisation campaigns reflected the changing needs of American Catholics.

She begins with a chapter on ‘North American saints’ when Archbishop, later Cardinal, James Gibbons of Baltimore called the Third Plenary Council of the Church in the United States in 1884. Gibbons's career itself highlighted the changing nature of Catholicism in the country. Born to Irish immigrant parents in the ancestral home of US Catholicism, Baltimore, Maryland, his family were among the few Irish who returned to Ireland. After his father's death, however, the family remigrated America and he entered the priesthood in Maryland. His first senior position in the Church was as Apostolic Vicar for North Carolina, ministering to a missionary flock of a few hundred spread out across the state. By 1884, however, the Church had matured into a very strong presence in America's cities (the US would lose its ‘mission status’ in 1908), particularly in the north-east, based on the popular Catholicism of European immigrants. A key element of that tradition was the celebration of saints. St Patrick, for example, became a rallying cry for Irish immigrants in America and in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. There was not, however, any American saint for all American Catholics to rally round. At the Plenary Council, American bishops, led by Gibbons sought to remedy this deficiency. Despite the dominant immigrant influence, however, it was the missionary tradition the bishops turned to for quick success. They asked for serious consideration to be given to the seventeenth-century Mohawk convert Catherine Tekakwitha and two French Jesuit priests who had evangelised Native Americans in what became upstate New York.

While welcomed by many Catholics as a first step toward becoming a mature, rather than a mission, Church, some still felt that what American Catholics needed was a truly ‘American’ saint rather than one from the colonial era connected more with French Canada than the United States. The strongest candidate to emerge at the turn of the century was Elizabeth Ann Seton. A convert from the Episcopal Church, the New York born and bred Seton, from a prominent family, founded the Daughters of Charity in Maryland as a working order of nuns committed to education and charity. The Daughters were often vital to the well-being of the poor in American cities, immigrant and native alike. Seton's case took hold of the popular imagination much more so than those from the colonial era. This quest for a national saint, more so than one who had lived on the North American continent, fit better with an America becoming more nationalist in the early twentieth century.

Yet, the Vatican did not declare Seton ‘Venerable’, the first major step to sainthood, until 1959 and she was not canonised until 1975. Indeed, her case had been overtaken by some early missionary martyrs and a recent immigrant. Three French Jesuit missionaries killed by Native Americans in the 1640s became the first American saints in 1930 and an immigrant, Frances Cabrini, who like Seton had founded an order of nuns to help the poor, was canonised in 1944, less than thirty years after her death. This fairly rapid elevation of Cabrini contrasts sharply with the delay over Seton and highlights the other main element of Cummings's work. Her deep research in American and Vatican archives helps her show us the intricacies, procedural, personal and political behind the process of canonisation. For the Jesuits the usual procedural hurdle of miracles (two needed for canonisation) could be eased because they had died for their faith as Christian martyrs. Seton's cause on the other hand was not procedurally or politically easy. A schism in the Daughters of Charity between congregations in New York and Maryland undermined her initially by making Vatican officials wary of any politics within the order. Similarly, the quest for the necessary miracles for canonisation was protracted and not very well organised. Most important though, having an inside track with a pope and other high-ranking officials was often key. Cabrini, unlike Seton had a very important one. Eugene Pacelli's becoming Pope Pius xii in 1939 put Cabrini's case on the fast track to sainthood because the new Italian pope was very familiar with the Italian-born nun. Cabrini had actually met with a previous pope (Leo xiii) to discuss support for the rapidly growing industrial working classes, exactly who she and her order worked with in the United States. Having the ear of the right person in Rome seemed to be the key factor in getting canonisation quickly.

This delving into the intricacies of Vatican/American Catholic politics is a major strength of this book, though a slight weakness as well. The reader can get lost at times and will need to refer often to the chronology in the back. None the less, Cummings's main point comes through loud and clear: ‘the saints U.S. Catholics supported . . . would say more about their own priorities than they would about the lives of saints they embraced’ (p. 57). She highlights the irony too that just as they reached the highpoint of their quest for American saints in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, when, along with Seton, eight others joined her in sainthood, the need for ‘holy heroes’ had diminished. Cummings clearly shows that Catholics have become integrated into American society and no longer needed a national saint to help them.