One might think that the sainthood cause of Don Luigi Sturzo, a late 19^th and 20^th century progressive Italian priest who championed the interests of the poor and, later, the anti-fascist cause during World War II, would be a natural for fast-track treatment in the Pope Francis era.

Sturzo was one of the early heralds of modern Catholic social teaching, the origins of which are conventionally traced to Pope Leo XIII and his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressing the injustices of the Industrial Revolution. Sturzo famously once said, “I have no flour in my own sack … I owe everything to Rerum Novarum.”