Pope Francis cites 4 American heroes
He regards Lincoln, King, Merton and Dorothy Day as guides.
POPE FRANCIS knows his American history.
In his speech yesterday at the White House, he cited the greatness of Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in the '30s that served the poor.
"A nation can be considered great," Francis said, "when it defends liberty, as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to dream of full rights for all their brothers and sisters as Martin Luther King sought to do, when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton."
- John F. Morrison