Dorothy Day was “a great witness to faith, hope and charity in the 20th century”, a woman who loved the Church despite the flaws of its members and who knew that serving God meant serving the poor and working for justice, Pope Francis has written. Source: NCR Online.
“The way in which Dorothy Day tells us how she became a Christian believer shows that people are not brought to God by human efforts or strategies, but by grace that springs from charity, witness that is beautiful and active love,” the Pope wrote in the foreword to a new edition of Day’s 1938 memoir on her conversion, From Union Square to Rome.
The edition, with the papal foreword, will be released in English by Orbis Books in 2024, but an Italian translation by the Vatican publishing house was released in late August.
Day, who lived from 1897-1980 and was co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, became a Catholic in 1927. Her cause for sainthood officially opened in 2000 and Pope Francis included her as one of the four “great Americans” he spoke about when he addressed the United States Congress in 2015.
Robert Ellsberg, editor-in-chief of Orbis Books, mentioned that moment during a talk about Day at the Communion and Liberation movement’s meeting in Rimini, Italy, on August 20.
“That Pope Francis should highlight Dorothy Day was in many ways not surprising,” he said. “It is hard to think of any other Catholic of recent times who so fully embodied his Gospel vision with its emphasis on mercy, his desire for a ‘poor Church for the poor,’ his challenge to the culture of indifference and a market economy that ‘kills,’ his call to touch the wounds of Christ in those on the margins and peripheries, his deep commitment to peace and care for creation, his teachings on ‘social friendship’ and solidarity, and his strategy for change with a focus on the slow, patient task of planting seeds.”
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Pope: Dorothy Day’s life shows evangelising power of charity, witness, love (By Cindy Wooden, OSV News via NCR Online)
