History in Colour: Dorothy Day

by Admin · February 27, 2023

US Catholic activist Dorothy Day is seated amid armed policemen during a protest in this still from the documentary film Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story. The founder of the Catholic Worker movement was born on November 8, 1897, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on November 29, 1980, in New York City.

As a young secular journalist, Day was a radical socialist who drew her impulse for social justice from Scripture.

After her conversion to Catholicism in 1927, she maintained her radical streak, co-founding the Catholic Worker newspaper, which is still running, with Peter Maurin in 1933. Out of this grew the Catholic Worker movement, which has provided shelter, food and clothing to the poor, and later developed a series of farms for communal living in the US, Canada and Britain.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Day was an anti-war activist and prolific writer, also condemning apartheid in South Africa. Popes Benedict XVI and Francis have stated their admiration for Day, and her sainthood cause is proceeding. She probably would have reservations about that. She once said: “Don’t call me a saint, I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” This line expresses Day’s well-founded fear that her radical activism might be whitewashed and even distorted.

(Original photo: Journey Films)

Published in the November 2022 issue of The Southern Cross magazine