Dorothy Day Biography

Dorothy Day was co-founder of a community of activists who published a newspaper while feeding, sheltering and living with the poor of New York City. The group and its paper, both called The Catholic Worker, set forth a radical Christian vision of a world made more humane through active love, sacrifice, personal freedom, pacifism and resistance of what they saw as the dehumanizing features of capitalism and nationalism. Day, from a nominally Protestant Christian family, had a recurring interest in things spiritual throughout her Bohemian young years as a journalist and activist for workers’ and women’s rights. She converted to Catholicism as a 30-year-old unwed mother. In 1933 she and an eccentric French thinker and vagabond, Peter Maurin, formed the Worker. In 2000 the Vatican agreed to the long protocol of considering her for sainthood. Some followers have objected, fearing that Day’s message, often at odds with mainstream Catholic and American culture, will be toned down in the process.