Welcome

Dorothy Day: laywoman, peace activist, Catholic convert, single mother, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement– and perhaps soon, a saint!

The Dorothy Day Guild is an association of the faithful working together to support and advance the cause of canonization for Dorothy Day. Since 2005, the Guild has assisted the official sainthood cause for Dorothy in the Roman Catholic Church and has worked to promote her legacy of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty.

About the Dorothy Day Guild

We are an association of the faithful who work to forward the canonization cause of Dorothy Day, a laywoman, Catholic convert, peace activist, single mother, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Founded in 2005, the Guild supports the official sainthood process for Dorothy and promotes her legacy of voluntary poverty and nonviolence and her unique witness to the Gospel.

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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?

- DOROTHY DAY

Graces, Favors, and Miracles

One of the Guild’s responsibilities is to document the help granted through Dorothy Day’s intercession. Nothing should be viewed as too insignificant to report.

With gratitude, we welcome your sharing.

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Latest News

By Casey Mullaney August 16, 2025
Dear Friends, All of us at the Guild were saddened to learn of the death of Monica Ribar Cornell , founding member of and advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild, on Friday, August 8th.
By Casey Mullaney August 5, 2025
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope this missive finds you well! The heat has finally broken in South Bend, and all of us at the Worker are grateful for the relief as we’ve passed the mid-point of the summer season. For many of us in the Midwest and the Northeast, this time of year is marked by transitions and heightened activity as we begin to bring in stone fruit and tomatoes from our gardens or look towards the start of a new school year. With that in mind, we have a lot of great things to share with you this month, including new resources, song lyrics, events, and two peace and justice action items! Dorothy on the Small Screen: Friday, August 1st marked the third anniversary of the death of Tom Cornell , former editor of the The Catholic Worker, founding member of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and close personal friend of Dorothy. Tom met his wife Monica (pictured here at their wedding, where Dorothy was among the guests!) at the Worker in New York in the 1950s; the Cornells passed on their vocation of hospitality and Gospel nonviolence to their children, Tommy and Deirdre, and to the hundreds of others they welcomed into their homes and lives over the course of nearly sixty years of marriage.
By Casey Mullaney July 8, 2025
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings on what for many of us in North America is already shaping up to be another hot, sticky summer day! We hope that those of you in hot climates are staying cool and are finding creative ways to support those in your towns and cities who are unsheltered from the elements. Emma, a member of our Catholic Worker community in South Bend, washes out empty milk jugs, fills them halfway with clean water, and freezes them overnight. In the morning, she fills them the rest of the way and hands them out to guests at our drop-in center to help them stay cool and hydrated throughout the afternoon. If you regularly walk or drive past homeless community members on your commute, we encourage you to pack an extra sealed bottle of water to give away on days like this. Here in the United States, we just celebrated the Fourth of July, a holiday which admittedly doesn’t mean very much to many of those who admire Dorothy and seek to follow Christ as she did. Dorothy practiced a very different kind of revolution than the kind which is celebrated by military parades and fireworks displays. In 1940, she wrote , “we consider the spiritual and corporal Works of Mercy and the following of Christ to be the best revolutionary technique and a means of changing the social order rather than perpetuating it. Did not the thousands of monasteries, with their hospitality change the entire social pattern of their day?” To all those who undertake the responsibility of sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, and all works of mercy in the heat, thank you for these revolutionary acts! Summer events: Our Guild’s online and in-person summer programming is in full swing as of this week! As a reminder, we are running TWO book clubs this summer, one in English and one in Spanish. Our English-language club is reading The Long Loneliness and has already had two meetings, but it’s not too late to sign up!
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Why Join the Dorothy Day Guild?

If you believe in the significance of Dorothy Day's life, joining the Dorothy Day Guild is a direct way to show that you support the cause for her canonization. In turn, the steady growth of Guild membership points to the vitality of grassroots support for the cause and allows us to continue offering free programming and resources to promote Dorothy’s legacy of hospitality, voluntary poverty, and Gospel nonviolence.

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Upcoming Events


Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings Lenten Book Club

Sunday, March 9th, 2025-Sunday, April 6th, 2025

7:30 PM Eastern to 8:30 PM Eastern

Zoom!

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    This year, Dorothy Day Guild board member and editor in chief of Orbis Books, Robert Ellsberg, will host our online reading group over the course of five Sundays in Lent. During our time together, we will work through Robert's newest edited volume of Dorothy's work, entitled Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings. This collection,



    "explores the key themes that underlay [Dorothy's} spirituality, beginning with the call to see Christ in the poor. Day’s spirituality was deeply influenced by the “Little Way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which showed the path to holiness in the daily exercise of patience, charity, and forgiveness. Dorothy extended this principle to the social dimension, the significance of the little protests we make or fail to make. She believed that each act of love, each witness for peace, increases the balance of love and peace in the world."



    If you do not yet have your own copy of Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings, you can purchase a copy through Orbis Books. We also encourage book club members to request a copy through their local public library. We look forward to a series of wonderful conversations as we journey together with Christ, and with Dorothy, in the Lenten season.



    Meeting schedule: Sunday evenings at 7:30 pm Eastern/6:30 pm Central


    Each meeting will last one hour.


Dorothy Day Symposium: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee

Saturday, March 29th, 2025

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Manhattan University

4513 Manhattan College Pkwy 

Bronx, NY 10471

and online.

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    In his announcement of the upcoming 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis called the faithful to read the signs of the times and to search amongst them for signs of hope. The Holy Father tells us that the first of these must be “the desire for peace in our world, which once more finds itself immersed in the tragedy of war…May the Jubilee remind us that those who are peacemakers will be called ‘children of God’ (Mt 5:9). The need for peace challenges us all, and demands that concrete steps be taken.” Likewise, Pope Francis asks the wider Christian community to offer real signs of hope to the poor at home and across the world whose material needs go unmet. In the life and legacy of Dorothy Day, we read these signs.


    Registration is now open for our for a one-day symposium! This event sponsored by the Dorothy Day Guild and the Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism on Saturday, March 29th, 2025 on the campus of Manhattan University in the Bronx, NY. Click here to read the initial call for papers and view the preliminary symposium schedule.


    We invite scholars at every level and peace practitioners whose life and work have been influenced by Dorothy Day’s legacy to join us in March for a day of shared conversation, clarification of thought, prayer, and fellowship.


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