The Tantrik Order in America was founded in 1909 by Pierre Bernard, who took for himself the title of Oom the Omnipotent. In 1910 two women would complain to New York City police that Bernard was keeping them against their will for his "orgies."

The first step toward the canonization of the first American Catholic saint was taken in 1909, when Italian-born Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, Mother Cabrini had been highly active in relief work among immigrants in New York's "Little Italy" since 1889. The continuation and expansion of that charitable work until her death in 1918 would be recognized by an unusually quick beatification (1938) and canonization (1946).

Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey, an Episcopal priest in Rochester, New York, was brought up before an ecclesiastical court on charges of heresy in...