1933 · New York City, New York, USA

Catholic Worker Movement Founded

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin launched a newspaper and a network of houses of hospitality during the Great Depression, creating a lay movement that took Catholic social teaching literally and lived it out among the poor.

On May 1, 1933, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin sold the first copies of The Catholic Worker newspaper in Union Square, New York, for one penny a copy. It still costs a penny. Day was a journalist, a convert, and a former radical who had lived a hard life before entering the Church. Maurin was a French peasant philosopher with big ideas about rebuilding society from the bottom up. Together they created something that did not fit any existing category. The Catholic Worker was not a charity. It was not a religious order. It was a lay movement that combined voluntary poverty, direct service to the poor, pacifism, and an uncompromising application of Catholic social teaching. Houses of hospitality opened in cities across the country, offering food and shelter to anyone who showed up. Workers lived alongside the homeless, sharing their conditions. Day opposed every war the United States fought during her lifetime, including World War II, which cost her much of her support. She was arrested repeatedly for civil disobedience. She irritated the Catholic establishment by being too radical and irritated radicals by being too Catholic. The movement she and Maurin started still exists, with over 200 communities worldwide. Day's cause for canonization is open. Cardinal Dolan of New York has called her a saint. She would probably have hated the fuss.

Why it matters

Created a lasting lay movement that embodied Catholic social teaching through voluntary poverty, direct service, and pacifism, influencing Catholic approaches to justice and peace worldwide.