A common complaint I hear from some lay Catholics is that most of the saints are priests, nuns or religious. What about ordinary people raising families and having jobs? Can’t they be saints, too?

Well, look no further than this unusual story out of Pittsburgh, where a widower is now working to have his late wife canonized — and just might succeed:

There are men who say, “My wife is a saint for putting up with me.” But an Ohio man, Jerome Coniker, may prove it.

The Vatican has given approval to pursue sainthood for his late wife, Gwen, who was 62 when she died in June 2002.

“When the church looks for sanctity, they don’t seek phenomenal signs or revelations or apparitions. They just look for the virtuous life. She sure qualifies for that,” said Mr. Coniker, co-founder with her of the Apostolate for Family Consecration in Bloomingdale, Ohio. Together they raised 12 children, and have 65 grandchildren.

A 10 a.m. Mass today in the chapel of Catholic Familyland, a resort-retreat center that the Conikers built, will open the investigation into whether Mrs. Coniker exhibited the “heroic virtue” that the church requires of a saint. For six months investigators will interview more than 100 witnesses and examine everything ever written by or about her. She will then become known as “Servant of God Gwen Coniker.”

Their reports will be sent to Rome, where theologians, bishops, cardinals and, ultimately, the pope, will decide if she was holy enough to proceed. If so, those promoting her cause will seek evidence of a medical miracle after someone sought her prayers. If the Vatican authenticates it, she will be beatified. One more miracle would be required for sainthood.

In Catholic teaching, anyone who dies and goes to heaven is, in fact, a saint. But the church chooses some as universal role models. Healings after the deceased is believed to have prayed for a medically hopeless case are considered proof of that soul’s whereabouts.

Mary Ellen Redington, who is assisting her husband, Deacon Randall Redington, in organizing the work in Bloomingdale, said the group has received claims of miracles. But church rules forbid her to discuss them.

“If I told you and you printed it, we couldn’t use it,” she said.

Some experts say that Mrs. Coniker appears to be the kind of new saint that the Vatican is looking for: She lived and died in a happy marriage. The claim for heroic virtue is based partly on her refusal to abort her 11th child after a doctor warned that the birth would kill her. With her husband, she gave up affluence to found a ministry to families.

That ministry includes Catholic Familyland, which can house up to 1,000 people for swimming, horseback riding and Eucharistic devotion; the Familyland TV network; teaching centers in Mexico, Europe, Russia, Nigeria and the Philippines; and a vast array of books and media on Catholic theology for laity. At Familyland’s annual Totus Tuus Family Conference, which begins Friday, Mr. Coniker will speak about his late wife.

They met at St. Gregory High School in Chicago and married in 1959, when she was 19 and he was 20. He later started a management firm that had Fortune 500 clients, and they bought a six-bedroom house near Chicago.

In the early 1960s, they threw themselves into the nascent right-to-life movement. By 1971 they concluded that the antidotes to abortion and family disintegration were spiritual, not political. They sold everything they had and moved to Fatima, Portugal — the site of a famed apparition of the Virgin Mary — to seek spiritual guidance. They stayed for two years.

In 1973 they moved to Kenosha, Wis., to work for a Franciscan community. They were broke and uninsured, and Mrs. Coniker required a Cesarean section — the first of four — for the birth of their ninth child. A doctor donated his services and became a close friend. Two years and a 10th baby later, with another on the way, the doctor told Mrs. Coniker that her uterus would burst and kill her unless she had an abortion. She refused.

“She really thought she was going to die giving birth to Theresa,” Mr. Coniker said.

Read on to discover what happened. It’s really a rare and inspiring story, one that bears witness to the sanctity of life — and says something about this one remarkable life, in particular.

Photo: Gwen Coniker, far left, and husband Jerry, far right, with their 12 children, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren in front of their home in Kenosha, Wis., in 1985. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Mary Sue Apostolate for Family Consecration