Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was a Catholic activist, anarchist and journalist who has been recommended for sainthood in the Catholic Church. She is best known for her work co-founding the Catholic Worker Movement and its eponymous newspaper.

Born in New York in 1897, Day founded the movement amid the Great Depression with fellow activist Peter Maurin. Day would often credit Maurin for the movement’s founding.

Though Maurin was Day’s “agitator, she was somewhat more practically minded than he and she was able to get it going,” says Marquette University archivist Phil Runkel.

The loosely organized group of lay activists are committed to voluntary poverty, service to the poor and nonviolent resistance to what was popularized by Day evangelists as “the filthy rotten system.”

Though “haunted by God” during  her life, Day entered a deeper relationship with the Catholic Church upon the birth of her daughter, Runkel said.

She never lost her radical political ideation, sometimes unwelcome in Catholic circles.

Day called journalism her vocation, and at the urging of Maurin started the Catholic Worker newspaper. The paper was famously sold for “a penny a copy” to remain accessible to the unemployed during the Great Depression. Circulation peaked around 100,000. Its circulation is now around 30,000 for its seven annual issues. It is still a penny a copy.

Day died in Manhattan at Mary House Catholic Worker on Nov. 29, 1980.

— Adam DeRose