Religion: Thief’s Church

Patron saint of those condemned to death is St. Dismas, the “Good Thief,” who was crucified alongside Jesus and asked the Lord to remember him in Heaven. In the U. S., Dismas was a much-neglected saint until the late Dempster MacMurphy, business manager of the Chicago Daily News, took him up, wrote an annual piece about him (TIME, March 6). Last Sunday Most Rev. Francis J. Monaghan, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ogdensburg, N. Y., laid the cornerstone of the first U. S. church dedicated to Dismas. Its location: inside the north gate of Clinton Prison, Dannemora, N. Y. Prisoners are building the church with stone from the prison quarry.