EDITORIAL

New York needs to straighten out its 2013 election calendar — right away

Although pride is one of the seven deadly sins, New Yorkers should feel a twinge Sunday when Pope Benedict confers sainthood on seven Catholics. Two members of the group have strong connections to this state, as did five of the 10 Americans already canonized. Nowhere in the nation comes close to having such a heavenly host.

New York’s five current saints are three Jesuit missionaries — Isaac Jogues, René Goupil and Jean de la Lande — all killed proselytizing in the New World; Elizabeth Ann Seton, who founded the Sisters of Charity in 1809, and Frances Cabrini, who devoted her life to the urban poor.

They will now be joined in the pantheon by Marianne Cope and Kateri Tekakwitha, both models of duty and piety.

Mother Marianne was a German native whose family settled in Utica in 1839. Joining the Sisters of St. Francis, she focused on healing, eventually traveling to Hawaii to work in the leper colony at Molokai. While many shunned those afflicted with the disfiguring bacterial disease, Mother Mari- anne devoted her life to easing their suffering.

Tekakwitha, known as Lily of the Mohawks, was a Native American orphan from near Albany who was tormented by her tribe for converting to Catholicism at age 20. She withstood ostracism and grueling hardships on a 200-mile, two-month trek to a Catholic mission in Canada.

There, she kept a vow of chastity until her death at age 24, becoming a symbol of Christian fortitude and virtue.

Five boroughs, 62 counties, seven saints: It just goes to show that New York’s historic dynamism energizes all aspects of life, extending from faith to reason, to which we now turn, noting a continuing dominance in the collection of Nobel Prizes.

The recently announced laureates included economist Alvin Roth, a Queens native, and Robert Lefkowitz, a Bronx High School of Science grad who shared the award for chemistry. All told, an astounding 30 or so Nobel winners started on their paths to greatness in the city’s public schools.

Such are the workings of the New York state of mind and soul.