In anticipation of this milestone anniversary, we are very pleased to announce that we are moving forward with a new, completely free membership structure for the Guild! Our Dorothy Day Guild Chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, included the following note for each of you here in our September missive:

Dear Friends, 

Thank you for supporting our cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization. The Dorothy Day Guild is excited to announce that membership is now dues-free. As subscribers to our missive and supporters of Dorothy’s cause, we are happy to welcome you as members!

Membership in the Guild is a simple, direct way for us to acknowledge the significance of Dorothy Day’s life and to get involved in her cause for sainthood. We invite you to pray for miracles garnered through Dorothy, to financially support our cause to the extent that you are able, to learn more about her life, and to share her Gospel witness in the world through words and social actions. 

To opt out of membership and stop receiving our monthly newsletter, please use the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of this email or message us at ddg@archny.org. 

To learn more about what it means to be a member of our Guild, check out our membership page on the website.

In gratitude for all the support,

Kevin Ahern, 

Chair of the Guild

We recognize that even if you never filled out a membership form or have been in a position to make regular financial contributions to the work of the Guild, Dorothy’s cause for canonization is close to each of your hearts. We are so grateful for your ongoing support and are very excited to offer universal, free membership to the Dorothy Day Guild for all of our subscribers from this point forward.

We’re excited to share some other news items and updates, and we have some great fall programs planned for the coming weeks, so keep reading to find out how you can continue being part of Dorothy’s canonization cause as members of the Guild!

Guild News and Updates: 

Several members of the Guild’s board of directors had the opportunity to represent Dorothy’s cause for canonization at two events on the East Coast earlier this month. At the 2025 Labor Day Parade on September 6th, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees brought out their Dorothy Day Ferry float, and a few of our friends were able to snag a quick picture!

The NYC Parade, organized by the New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO is the oldest Labor Day parade in the country, with tens of thousands of working people participating. With Dorothy, we give thanks for all of those who labor and those who have given their time, their talent, and in some cases their very lives to help workers organize for just wages, safe conditions, and for the recognition of their inherent dignity as co-creators with God.

We also were honored to receive an invitation to participate in the “Saints on Their Way Village” on September 14th, 2025 at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland, alongside representatives from nearly two dozen other Guilds for American sainthood causes like ours. This event marked the fiftieth anniversary of the canonization of St. Elizabeth Seton, the first officially-recognized saint to be born in the United States. The event organizers from the St. Elizabeth Seton shrine saw the canonization anniversary as a chance to promote the many ways of living out the universal call to holiness in a distinctively American context.

Our national community and global church needs these exemplars, now more than ever, and we were so grateful that the folks at the St. Elizabeth Seton Shrine reached out to the Guild with this invitation. As our board member Carolyn Zablotny told a reporter from Catholic News Agency, “[Dorothy’s] a radical alternative to militarism, racism, and the selfishness that we’re all suffering from. I think she’s a real model for a different kind of holiness.”

Upcoming Events:

You may have seen that we sent out a quick events blast last week, but in case you missed it, we have several in-person and virtual events coming up, including one this weekend!

First, this Sunday, September 21st, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan is dedicating a brand-new, 12-panel mural that features Dorothy alongside other holy figures from New York’s past and present. The Guild will be hosting an informal “Meet-up at the Mural” for any of our members who would like to attend the Mass and dedication together.

“What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding,” by artist Adam Cvijanovic, recognizes the past and present immigrants of New York City as well as holy men and women such as Servant of God Dorothy Day, St. Frances Cabrini and Venerable Pierre de Toussaint, who cared for the immigrant poor of New York. Cvijanovic’s also featured St. Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin and Mohawk Catholic who was born in Central New York in 1656 and who was canonized in 2012, as part of the great crowd of witnesses pictured in the mural to remind the faithful that “you’ve got to represent the people who were here [prior to the arrival of European immigrants] because the land wasn’t empty.”

His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan will preside at the 10:15 Mass and the dedication on Sunday morning.

There is no fee or registration needed for the Mass-- feel free to just show up! If you would like to sit with the Dorothy Day Guild group, meet us at the front entrance to the Cathedral at 9:30 AM on Sunday, September 21st. Look for the teal Dorothy Day Guild banner! We'll be sure to take a group picture in front of the murals after Mass as well.

To learn more about the murals, Cvijanovic’s artistic process, and how the various men and women he painted were chosen, check out the recent New York Times article, “St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Unveil Mural Celebrating City’s Immigrants.” You can also watch a few short clips and interviews from the unveiling, which took place on Thursday morning, over at The Good News Room.

We are also looking forward to co-sponsoring a virtual event the following weekend, on Saturday, September 27th at 2:00 PM Eastern/1:00 PM Central, organized by our friends at the Dorothy Day Canonization Prayer Network, “Dorothy Day: Benedictine Oblate and Candidate for Canonization.” This one-hour webinar will feature Robert Ellsberg, Emanuele Spedicato, Martha Hennessy, Joseph Sclafani, Stephen Drees, and David Mueller.

Our panelists will speak about Dorothy’s life of sanctity, her religious devotion as a Benedictine Oblate, and her strong commitment to prayer and will additionally discuss the current state of her cause for canonization. We will be livestreaming this event on our Dorothy Day Guild YouTube channel, so if you or someone you know is interested in learning more about Dorothy’s life, her cause, or how canonization works more generally in the Church, please be sure to register! This is a fantastic educational opportunity and we are so excited to invite you to take part.

We are continuing to offer Sunday afternoon walking pilgrimages in Manhattan this month and next from 2:00-4:30 PM on September 28th, October 12th, and October 19th, so please join us if you’re in town! These pilgrimages are a wonderful way to “pray with your feet” and immerse yourself in the churches, neighborhoods, and houses of hospitality where Dorothy spent so many decades living out her vocation of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty.

Looking a little further ahead, we have a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share with you for Dorothy’s anniversary this November. You are warmly invited to participate in our first-ever official Dorothy Day Guild event in Rome! Alongside partners from Pontifical Gregorian University, University of Notre Dame Rome, the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University, and the Lay Center, the Dorothy Day Guild is co-sponsoring “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day” on Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 from 15:30-19:00 local time (9:30 AM-1:00 PM Eastern). This symposium will be free and open to the public and will be offered in English with translation provided in Italian.

While the symposium organizers haven’t finalized every detail, we do have a preliminary schedule to share with you. The speakers listed here are a mix of scholars, clergy, writers, and members of the Catholic Worker movement, each of whom will bring his or her particular expertise in the emerging field of Dorothy Day studies into conversation with the wider disciplines of moral theology and Catholic social teaching. If you aren’t able to come to Rome, don’t worry– the Guild plans to livestream the event to enable participation from all over the world! 

As soon as a registration link from our academic sponsors at the Gregorian is ready, we will share it with you. In the meantime, keep an eye on our Guild “Upcoming Events” page to see additional updates!

Finally, we also wanted to share one additional event which our friends at St. Bakhita Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, WI are organizing for the fall and winter. The St. Bakhita community has hosted a number of book studies on Dorothy, and this year is sponsoring “Dorothy Day: Patron Saint of Both/And- A Seven-Month Study,” which begins next month on October 15th. Over the course of the October-April monthly meetings, study group members will have the opportunity to view the documentary Dorothy Day: Don’t Call Me A Saint, read and discuss William Miller’s early biography of Dorothy, participate in an Advent retreat at the Catholic Worker house, and visit the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University. If you are in the greater Milwaukee area and are interested in deepening your knowledge of Dorothy’s life in community with other learners and seekers, consider signing up for the study!

Dorothy in the Media:

Dorothy has been mentioned in a few additional Catholic news outlets and publications over the course of the past month, which we’ll mention briefly. First, on a recent episode of Godsplaining, the podcast of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, guest speaker Fr. Donald Haggerty brought up St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata’s visit to New York City in 1979. Fr. Haggerty recalls that on this visit, 

“the first person Mother Mother Teresa wanted to meet in New York was Dorothy Day. And she did go down really to the Bowery and walked with her in the streets. And at one point she turned to Dorothy Day….and said, 'How is it that in your country you have so many people dying in the streets?' and Dorothy Day answered her and said, 'Mother, they're not dying. Not just yet. These are our poor people.'"

Many of us know and love the story of this encounter and of Mother Teresa’s visit to Maryhouse, but what is most interesting in Fr. Haggerty’s interview is that he actually credits Dorothy’s work in the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality with giving a new direction to the Missionaries of Charity and putting “a serious spark and a seed in Mother Teresa because she then eventually opened up hundreds of houses in Europe, in the United States, in South America where that kind of inner city poor is present.” If you’re on Instagram, you check out the brief clip where Fr. Haggerty discusses the friendship between Dorothy and St. Mother Teresa on this reel. 

Jason Adkins also wrote about Dorothy as an exemplar of faithful citizenship and deep participation in the life of the political community for The Good News Room. In this brief reflection, Jason identifies Dorothy’s life and legacy as a model of incarnational political activity, in which “she didn’t waste time waiting for the system to fix itself. She built a new way of living right in its shadow. She practiced a kind of politics rooted in community, compassion, and daily commitment, one that looked askance at events in Washington without pretending politics didn’t matter.” Here, Jason encourages us to take action to “build the kingdom of God in ways that are faithful, effective, and lasting.”

Dorothy’s concerns were always both local, personal, and addressed to the person immediately in front of her, and simultaneously concerned with justice for suffering members of Christ’s Body across the world. Drawing from Dorothy’s example, Jason reminds us that “local politics is not beneath us. It is one arena in which our faith can take flesh and where faithful citizenship becomes a lived reality. It is not only a political act, it is an act of hope, charity, and obedience to the call of Christ.”

Next week marks the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, where addressed a joint session of the US Congress and named Dorothy as one of four great American exemplars. Noting this anniversary and the increasing interest in American canonization causes, EWTN News Nightly’s Tara Mergener included a brief spotlight on Dorothy in her September 1st broadcast.

This month also marks the 80th anniversary of Dorothy’s prophetic statement, “We Go on Record: The CW Response to Hiroshima,” in which Dorothy lamented the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed 318,000 people in the initial blast and “scattered, men, women and babies, to the four winds, over the seven seas.”

In her own September 16th column for L’Osservatore Romano, "La pace si costruisce con la pace" (“Peace is built with peace,”) our friend Giulia Galeotti offers a gloss of Dorothy’s response to this horrific violence, noting (in translation here),

“The surprising thing is that Day's anger toward the military-industrial complex, the arrogance of the scientists who created the bomb, and the United States as killers of their brothers and sisters in Christ, finds a counterpoint in her faith, which is equally infinite.”

The Italian edition of L’Osservatore requires a paid subscription, but if anyone has a copy of this article, we’d love to read it! It’s been really neat to see the diverse range of voices within the Church who are drawing from Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality to consider how we might respond to the Gospel in our own time.

Prayer Requests:

The Guild has received several urgent requests for intercessory prayer in the past several weeks. Please remember the following individuals in your prayers this month, and ask Dorothy to join you in interceding on their behalf:

First, three of our Guild members wrote to us concerning loved ones who are suffering from cancer. Emily in California has asked us to pray for a miraculous healing from advanced-stage cancer for her cousin, a young mother to a baby girl. Emily tells us that like Dorothy, her cousin has devoted her life to helping low-income workers, particularly domestic laborers. We also ask you to continue praying for Kenzie, the young mother in Indiana who is struggling with cancer while expecting her second child. In addition to these two young women, Nancy from Chicago also reached out to us on behalf of a five-year-old relative who is beginning a third round of chemotherapy to treat tumors in her lungs and kidneys. As you pray, please ask Dorothy to intercede for these beloved children of God that they might be restored to full health and flourishing.

The recent canonizations of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis, each of whose presence in heaven was confirmed by otherwise inexplicable healings, tells us that the time of miracles has not passed. In God’s time, we trust that prayer through Dorothy’s intercession will yield the same incontrovertible results. We have heard from several of you who believe that you may have already experienced healing through Dorothy’s prayers. Earlier this month, Stephen Drees wrote to us to share that on June 24th of this year, he was rushed to the hospital with a severe internal bleed that he was not expected to survive. Stephen has allowed us to share the following account with you all:

“Prior to emergency surgery the doctor advised me that my condition and situation was dire as people with a hemoglobin level this low typically die before they can be operated on or do not survive even with surgery. During the surgery, I was conscious and personally asked Servant of God Dorothy Day to intercede on my behalf, as did many others in the Las Vegas Catholic Worker community. 

Praying to Dorothy was natural for me as I am a Catholic Worker (volunteer) and a Benedictine Oblate of Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Because Dorothy had been an Oblate of Saint Procopius Abbey she has been an inspiration to my Oblate vocation for years and a frequent recipient of my prayer requests. 

The procedure which typically lasts slightly over an hour lasted three hours. Ultimately the bleeding was identified and mitigated… As I recovered over the next several weeks, doctors commented on the fact that I had no permanent damage of any kind as a result of the bleed – something that was also described as "miraculous". Sixty days after my health crisis, I was hiking in the mountains of Utah - completely healed – as if nothing had ever happened. I believe Servant of God Dorothy Day interceded on my behalf to help save my life.”

Thanks be to God for this recovery! The process of identifying and investigating miraculous healings in a modern canonization process is long and involves a thorough review of medical information, so while we don’t yet know whether what Stephen experienced meets the criteria for a miracle, we are honored to share his testimony of faith in God and in Dorothy’s powerful intercession with you. We hope that what Stephen has told us encourages you to ask Dorothy to pray with you for your own needs and those of your loved ones, and reminds you that God is still active and at work in our world today. If you or someone you know is in need of prayer, or has experienced any form of restoration through your prayers to Dorothy, please reach out and let us know.

Narratives of contemporary canonization causes often focus on these medical miracles because they are in a sense quantifiable: the best of our medical science cannot attribute these healings to any other cause. However, God works through the communion of saints in ways that are perhaps less dramatic, but equally significant in the lives of the faithful, granting us strength and grace in challenging circumstances of our lives. We received the following request from a young woman in Illinois, who has asked us to pray that Dorothy will help her find her vocation:

“Since receiving my bachelor's in 2015, I have struggled to find my place in the world, moving through low-wage, dead-end jobs. For the past five years, I’ve worked as a receptionist at a senior living community. I initially saw this role as a way to bring God’s love to the residents, especially during COVID, but as life returned to normal, internal opportunities I applied for were repeatedly given to others. I live paycheck to paycheck, even with occasional help from my parents, while my siblings seem to have found their paths.

I pray that Dorothy Day’s urgent intercession will guide me toward a vocation that fulfills God’s will for me, and that I may one day share good news that comes through her prayers. Thank you for your intercession.”

During her lifetime, Dorothy helped hundreds of young women and men discover the good work that God intended for them, and in the years since her death, she has done the same for the thousands of people who have encountered her through her writing and through the Catholic Worker movement. Please ask Dorothy to intercede on behalf of this young woman who has placed her trust in Dorothy’s prayers, and in ours.

A few words from Dorothy:

This fall, I have the privilege of teaching a course on Dorothy for graduate students in theology. My students have just finished reading The Long Loneliness, and one of the primary themes they drew from this text is the connection between wholeness and holiness, and the significance of work for the flourishing of the human person. In our class on Tuesday, we spent time discussing how Peter Maurin’s ideas on cult, culture, and cultivation had informed Dorothy’s own theology of labor and read through this passage from the chapter “Community,” in Dorothy’s spiritual autobiography:

“The word philosophy is bandied around a great deal today. John Cogley, who formerly headed our house of hospitality in Chicago and is now an editor of The Commonweal, told us about one of his professors at Fribourg who lectured on Russian philosophy. ‘In all their schools, whether of law, medicine, art, engineering or agriculture, philosophy is required study,’ he said. And that is right, because in order to achieve integration, the whole man, there must be an underlying philosophy that directs and lends meaning to his life…

Peter’s Christian philosophy of work was this. God is our creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators. He gave us a garden to till and cultivate. We become co-creators by our responsible acts, whether in bringing forth children, or producing food, furniture, or clothing. The joy of creativeness should be ours.”

For Dorothy, responsible acts are those we undertake with intention, in order to build up the common good, and in the full knowledge that we are participating in God’s ongoing work of creation and restoration. Dorothy’s understanding of labor is sacramental: through our work, the material world can become a site of divine activity and grace. Our capitalist economic system encourages us to more often think about work in terms of consumption, profits, and shareholder value; this month, as we honor organized labor and working people, let’s pray and act with Dorothy to build a world in which work is joyful, creative, and in service to the Kingdom of God.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild