Saints (secular or divine)

Saints (secular or divine). In the Initial Report of Orphans International Worldwide (1999), Jim Luce wrote, “Without saints, secular or divine, sanctity can too easily be viewed as mere abstraction. Our children need heroes. The courage of Mahatma Gandhi and the brilliance of Albert Einstein make sainthood a reality for us all.”

In the organization’s Initial Report, Luce called for 36 real-life saints to serve as role models for the children of OIW as part of the process of Raising Global Leaders. These global heroes included:

Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Romero, The Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Katharine Drexel, Dorothy Day, Woodrow Wilson, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin, Pearl S. Buck, Menachem Begin, Heinrich Böll, Willy Brandt, Albert Camus, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, T.S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Dag Hammarskjöld, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Yasunari Kawabata, Rudyard Kipling, Le Duc Tho, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann, Eugene O’Neil, Anwar Sadat, Jean-Paul Sartre, Eisaku Sato, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Steinbeck, Rabindranath Tagore, and Elie Wiesel.