G. K. Chesterton, prolific author and Catholic apologist, may soon be adding another accomplishment to his name – sainthood.

According to the Daily Mail, Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, England, the diocese in which Chesterton lived, has ordered an examination of the life of the famous writer, a step that is expected to lead to the official opening of his cause for beatification.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born on May 29, 1874 in London to a middle-class family. During his college years, he went through a crisis of faith and eventually left University College without a degree to go to work for a London publisher. It was not until after he married his wife, Frances Blogg, in 1901 that he began to come back to his Christian roots.

For the next two decades, he produced many writings, including poetry and literary biographices. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) was his first novel, followed by The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). After his conversion to Catholicism in 1922, he wrote biographies of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as a popular series featuring a detective named Father Brown. Chesterton died at home in Beaconsfield, England on June 14, 1936.

In a recent interview with Zenit News, Paolo Gulisano, author of the first Italian-language biography of Chesterton, said there many people believe there is clear evidence that Chesterton was more than just a great writer and apologist.

“Testimonies about him speak of a person of great goodness and humility, a man without enemies, who proposed the faith without compromises but also without confrontation, a defender of Truth and Charity,” Gulisano said. “His greatness is also in the fact that he knew how to present Christianity to a wide public, made up of Christians and secular people.”

Chesterton could be defined as a “confessor of the faith” because he was not just an apologist, “but also a type of prophet who glimpsed far ahead of time the dramatic character of modern issues like eugenics,” Gulisano states.

He goes on to say that some, such as the English Dominican Aidan Nichols, believe Chesterton should be seen as nothing less than a possible “father of the Church” of the 20th century.

Chesterton’s cause is off to a good start. Pope Francis, while still serving the Church in the capacity of Archbishop of Buenos Aires, approved a prayer calling for Chesterton’s canonization just two days before he was elected Pope.

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