G.K. Chesterton soon to be saint?

MAURO PIANTA
Vatican Insider
August 9, 2013

TURIN - Who knows whether a sort of Fr. Brown figure will be investigating the canonization cause of English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)? It was recently announced that Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, England, has appointed a suitable cleric to begin an investigation into the potential for opening a cause for G.K. Chesterton, a writer, essayist and journalist and author of the much loved Father Brown detective stories who converted to Catholicism in 1922.

The President of the American Chesterton Society, Dale Ahlquist, announced the news last 1 August. “It was a great privilege for me to make the announcement at the conference,” he said. “One of the reasons that especially motivated him (Mgr. Doyle, Ed.) is the fact that His Holiness, Pope Francis, expressed support for Chesterton’s Cause when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.”

Mgr. Doyle is the Bishop of the diocese of Northampton, a suffragan see of the Archdiocese of Westminster, which covers the counties of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire and the traditional county of Buckinghamshire.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is one of the England’s most celebrated writers. His books “Orthodoxy,” “The Everlasting Man,” his works about St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the Father Brown detective stories, are world famous. All his texts are brilliant, deep reflections into the relationship between faith and reason. Their content played an important role in many people’s decision to convert and was a positive influence on many great 20th century figures.

One of his friends (and admirers) was British writer and philosopher Clive Staples Lewis. But Chesterton also influenced John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, author of “The Lord of the Rings” and other fantasy best-sellers such as “The Hobbit” and “The Silmarillion”. He also inspired the scholar, poet playwright and journalist Maurice Baring, the historian Christopher Henry Dawson, the theologian Mgr. Ronald Knox and agnostic authors such as the great Argentinean writer, Jorge Luis Borges.

The President of the Chesterton American Society recalled Chesterton’s influence on the Servant of God, U.S. Archbishop Fulton John Sheen, one of the most brilliant preachers of his time. “I think he (Chesterton, Ed.) is very much a saint for our time and could draw many people into the Catholic Church,” Ahlquist said. So could Chesterton be made a saint soon? He would probably have laughed at the thought. Or would the master of paradox perhaps have foud it paradoxical?