Solution: Double Dating Answer: OLIVE
Knowing how to match these items is the challenging part. The title hints that we should consider dates.
Each item in the leftmost column is a saint who has a feast day celebrating their holy life. Each of these feast days correspond with a United Nations day for promoting awareness of the items in the rightmost column. Matching them up, they do pass through exactly one middle character, as we hoped.
| Left Column | Right Column | Date | Passes Through |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aloysius Gonzaga | Yoga | June 21 | L |
| Angela of Foligno | Braille | January 4 | F |
| Athanasius | Tuna | May 2 | R |
| Aurelius of Carthage | Chess | July 20 | C |
| Barbara | Banks | December 4 | 9 |
| Benedict | Population | July 11 | I |
| Bernardine of Siena | Bee | May 20 | E |
| Clotilda | Bicycle | June 3 | B |
| Cunegunda | Wildlife | March 3 | E |
| Eugene de Mazenod | Tea | May 21 | P |
| Faustina Kowalska | Teachers | October 5 | E |
| Francis de Sales | Education | January 24 | R |
| Joan of Arc | Potato | May 30 | U |
| John Baptist de la Salle | Health | April 7 | C |
| Maria Bertilla Boscardin | Statistics | October 20 | C |
| Nicholas of Flüe | Poetry | March 21 | N |
| Peter Chrysologus | Friendship | July 30 | A |
| Quirinus of Neuss | Jazz | April 30 | H |
| Severinus Boethius | Snow Leopard | October 23 | 1 |
| Teresa of Calcutta | Charity | September 5 | N |
| Vincent de Paul | Tourism | September 27 | D |
Reading the intersected characters from top to bottom does not reveal anything meaningful, but it does look like there are words there. If we sort the table based on date, we get FRENCH
REPUBLICAN DEC 19 which is more meaningful but likely not the final answer.
Perhaps something significant happens on December 19th? Googling the cluephrase reveals that there is another calendar called the French Republican calendar, and in this calendar, each day is associated with a French word. Upon examining this calendar, we learn that December 19th is OLIVE, the answer to the puzzle.