Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 - November 29, 1980), initially Marxist, became Catholic in 1927. She was the cofounder in 1933 of the Catholic Worker Movement, which espouses nonviolent action, and hospitality for the homeless, hungry and forsaken.
The movement started with the Catholic Worker newspaper that she and Peter Maurin founded to stake out a neutral, pacifist position in the increasingly war-torn 1930s.
Day later opened a "house of hospitality " in the slums of New York City. The movement quickly spread to other cities in the US, and to Canada and England; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941. (Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.)
By the 1960s Day was embraced by left-wing Catholics —although Day was opposed to the sexual revolution of that decade, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s, when she had a then-illegal abortion.
There are conflicting campaigns for and against her canonization.
Her autobiography The Long Loneliness was published in 1952.
Awards and Recognition
1978: Pax Christi USA Pope Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award
External links
Last updated: 10-11-2005 09:45:20
