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The Servant of God Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist turned social activist, anarchist (she was an Industrial Workers of the World member), and devout member of the Catholic Church. She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. Alongside Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, espousing nonviolence, and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden.
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 United States, and to Canada and the United Kingdom; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941. Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.
By the 1960s Day was embraced by left-wing Catholics. Although Day had written passionately about women’s rights, free love and birth control in the 1910s, she opposed the sexual revolution of the sixties, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s, when she had an abortion.
Day is buried in Resurrection Cemetery on Staten Island, just a few blocks from where her beachside cottage once stood where she first became interested in Catholicism.
Day was proposed for sainthood by the Claretian Missionaries in 1983. Some opponents have found her unworthy because of the "sins of her youth" — pre-marital sex and an abortion. Others, Catholic Workers among them, found the process unworthy of her. Nevertheless, the Pope granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open Day's "cause" in March of 2000, officially bestowing upon her the title of Servant of God.
Her autobiography The Long Loneliness was published in 1952. Day's account of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes, was published in 1963. A popular movie called Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story was produced in 1996 about the life and struggles that Day endured. Day was portrayed by Moira Kelly and Maurin was portrayed by Martin Sheen, both known for their roles on The West Wing television series in the United States. The first full-length documentary about her, "Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me a Saint," premiered at Marquette University, where an archives of her papers are housed, on November 29, 2005 *.
External links
- The Catholic Worker Movement
- Industrial Workers of the World
- Whole Earth: The Way of Love: Dorothy Day and the American Right
- Biography at FemBio – Notable Women International
- Marquette University's Dorothy Day Collection
Awards and Recognition
1972: Laetare Medal, University of Notre Dame
1978: Pax Christi USA Pope Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award
2002: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
See also
1897 births | 1980 deaths | American Christian socialists | Autobiographers | Members of the Socialist Party of America | Nonviolence | Recipients of the Thomas Merton Award | Roman Catholic activists | Roman Catholic converts | Roman Catholic writers | Servants of God | Tax resisters | Women writers
Dorothy Day | Dorothy Day | Dorothy Day | Dorothy Day | ドロシー・ディ
"Dorothy Day"