20th century
Feast: July 30
His superiors didn't trust him to preach or hear confessions, so he was assigned to answer the door — and people lined up around the block for decades to talk to him.
Solanus Casey was ordained a 'simplex priest' — meaning he could celebrate Mass but was not permitted to preach formal sermons or hear confessions. His superiors considered his intellectual abilities insufficient. So they gave him the humblest job available: porter. He answered the door. For decades — first in New York, then in Detroit — that's what he did. And people came. They came by the hundreds, then by the thousands. They lined up around the block outside St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit, waiting to talk to the quiet Capuchin at the door. He listened to their problems, prayed with them, and enrolled them in the Seraphic Mass Association, asking for small donations. Extraordinary things kept happening to the people he prayed for — healings, recoveries, conversions. He kept meticulous notes in a notebook, recording intentions and results. He was also a passable violin player and had a corny sense of humor that put anxious visitors at ease. He lived on almost nothing, gave away whatever he had, and maintained a disposition so consistently cheerful that his fellow friars found it slightly unnerving. He died in 1957 at eighty-six. Over twenty thousand people filed past his coffin. He was beatified in 2017 — the second American-born man to be beatified.