Humankind: Dorothy Day

When Pope Francis addressed Congress in 2015, he cited four great Americans: President Abraham Lincoln, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., writer and activist Dorothy Day and theologian Thomas Merton. Ms. Day, who died in 1980 at age 83, was a remarkable 20th century figure: journalist and founder of the “Catholic Worker” movement, which established soup kitchens and “houses of hospitality” in the Great Depression. More than 200 Catholic worker facilities remain in operation today.

In this profile, we hear excerpts of a talk by Dorothy Day, along with recollections by her youngest grandchild, Kate Hennessy, a Vermont resident, who recently published a moving family memoir, The World Will Be Saved By Beauty for which she reconstructed the Dorothy Day story.

Also heard is Kathe McKenna, co-founder of Haley House in Boston, a Catholic Worker hospitality center, inspired by the life and work of Dorothy Day. Today, more than fifty years later, Haley House operates a soup kitchen, food pantry, elder meal site, more than a hundred units of affordable housing, an urban farm, and the Haley House Bakery Café. Most recently, they opened Dudley Dough, an inner city workplace that offers a living wage and for customers, healthy pizza. 

Click here to listen: Humankind: Dorothy Day