Today there are numerous saints but we are going to go with St. Dominic of the Causeway. He built part of the road and all of one of the bridges used by pilgrims going to Compostela. He longed to be a priest but was never accepted, due to his appearance and his ignorance. But he was a holy man and in some mystical way, he WAS a priest. He brought the people to God. Of course, it wasn't in the way he expected. But still, "Then was unsealed again something of that ancient secret which had so strangely described the priest as the builder of bridges." - G. K. Chesterton. And is not one of the titles of our Holy Father the Pope "Pontifex Maximus" -- chief builder of bridges?
Dominic despaired of getting accepted either as a priest or a monk, so he settled himself as a solitary out in the wilderness of Bureba, in northwestern Spain. He built himself a little cabin and a chapel and dug out a garden. Sensing a need, he cleared a path through the treacherous forest, banked the road, and constructed a bridge. He even built a hospice for the weary travelers. And when he died in 1109, they laid him in a grave he had made himself. I think St. Dominic de la Calzada should be a patron of civil engineers!
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