Dorothy Day
Overview
Dorothy Day was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism
Distributism
Distributism is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Catholic thinkers as G. K...

. She was also considered to be an anarchist
Christian anarchism
Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. It is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus...

, and did not hesitate to use the term. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin
Peter Maurin
Peter Maurin was a Roman Catholic social activist who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 with Dorothy Day.Maurin expressed his ideas through short pieces of verse that became known as - Biography :...

 to establish the Catholic Worker movement
Catholic Worker Movement
The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ." One of its guiding principles is hospitality towards those on...

, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.

Day's cause for canonization
Canonization
Canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process...

 is open in the Catholic Church.
Dorothy Day was born in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and raised in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 and Chicago.
Quotations

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?

Loaves and Fishes (1963)

The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

As quoted in Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age (1988), by Daniela Gioseffi, p. 103

 
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