LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) _ Some officials in Louisville are pushing to name the downtown Ohio River bridge that's under construction after Trappist monk Thomas Merton.
The Courier-Journal reports four Metro Council members sent a letter on Oct. 29 to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. They say that Merton is the state's most famous author and has been recognized around the world as a spiritual voice for peace and unity.
Merton was an American Catholic writer and Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Nelson County. His most famous work is the 1948 autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain.''
The request comes in conjunction with an online petition launched Thursday by Bellarmine University.
Other suggestions have included naming the bridge after Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis or civil rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr.
