Dorothy, Day

Dorothy Day, was an American journalist and social activist. She was a convert to Catholicism and became famous for her social activism which she described in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness.

As a member of suffragist Alice Paul’s nonviolent Silent Sentinels, she was imprisoned in 1917. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combines direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf, which led to additional arrests.

Day described her social activism in her writings particularly in the Catholic Worker newspaper she co-founded and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in 1980. In the Catholic Worker, she advocated the Catholic economic theory of “distributism,” which she considered a third way between capitalism and socialism. Her activism and writing gave her a national reputation as a political radical.

Dorothy Day’s life became an inspiration for the Catholic Church and Pope Francis included her in a short list of exemplary Americans, together with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton, in his address before the United States Congress. The Church has opened the cause for Day’s possible canonization, and refers to her with the title of “Servant of God.”