Our saints, too numerous to mention, are sprinkled across our liturgical calendar, but chances are, no one has heard of Saint Elliot Liebow, an American Jew.

What is he doing on the Catholic roster of saints? Well, I put him there, which is probably illegal and could land me in plenty of trouble with the liturgical police. However, Liebow earned a doctorate from the Catholic University, so that makes him a kind of kissing cousin, wouldn't you say?

When I read of his death, the world seemed to be a lonelier, less caring place; canonizing helped. 

Back in 1984, Liebow, at age 58, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the kind of news that tends to drive the price of time clear off the New York stock exchange.

After thinking things over, he decided to do something with his remaining months besides shuffling papers at his desk on the 12th floor of the government office building in Washington, D.C., where he had worked for over 25 years as an anthropologist with the National Institute of Mental Health. He'd go home to his wife, Harriet, and his two daughters. And he would go home to the homeless.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd done a crazy thing like that. In 1967, he'd taken a year off to hang around with black street-corner men in a Washington slum, and related their stories in "Tally's Corner," which sold 900,000 copies.

This time around, he started with one night a week at a women's shelter, preparing the evening meal, handing out soap and linens, and talking with those who were at the bottom of the social-economic totem pole.

Eventually, he went to Canada for medical treatment, and as his health improved, he began spending more days and longer hours with the homeless.

He thought of writing another book, this one from the standpoint of homeless women, so he asked the women's permission to make notes of what was going on in their lives, with the promise that they would have the last word about what would and would not go into the book.

"Tell Them Who I Am" describes the lives of those women. It tells us, also, about the courage and self-forgetfulness of the writer. Except for a couple of sentences in the introduction and at the end, we learn nothing of how Liebow dealt with his illness. No self-pity, no heroics. He kept the stage clear for the women.

We meet the middle-aged woman who is dropped off at the shelter every evening by her husband. He gives her a kiss, then drives away to spend the night in the parking lot. They both work, but at jobs that don't pay enough to shelter them and the children staying with the grandparents.

More and more homeless are so because low-cost housing is being torn down to make way for modern condominiums to shelter those whose salaries run into six figures. For the women, housing meant "an efficiency apartment," a "cubby hole," "my own place," nothing as grand as a house or condominium.

In moments of loneliness, they turned to one another and looked to God for hope and a sense of self-worth to give their lives meaning. Deep inside themselves, they found the grace and the strength to keep going one day at a time.

The Bible was common ground for any discussion, and they favored the King James version. No one liked the Good News Bible. Because Revelations was too difficult, most agreed that ministers didn't preach much from it except for W.W. Armstrong.

Hilda said that one day she was in her car and thinking about suicide when she turned to God and pleaded, "God, here I am. You said you are my comforter and my redeemer. Well, I need comforting and redeeming. Quick." Next day, Social Services gave her an emergency grant to get an oil change and fill her tank with gas. When God touches hearts, miracles happen, Saint. Liebow explained.

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