His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan celebrated today the Rite of Continuing Conversion for candidates who have participated in their Parish Catechumenate (RCIA) process and are ready to complete their Christian initiation this Easter. Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Joseph were two Dominican parishes that participated in the liturgy at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York City. Cardinal Egan encouraged the candidates to become saints and held up several examples including Rose, the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, a convert to Catholicism, who founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and provided free care to poor cancer patients in New York City. The Cardinal also mentioned the life of Dorothy Day who before she converted to Catholicism, pursued, to put it kindly, a “Bohemian” lifestyle, full of excesses of all kinds. However, once she discovered the Lord and His Church in 1918 through hours of prayer in St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village (run by the Dominican Friars) she became a great champion for the poor and the marginalized. 

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