About Catholic Worker Movement
The Catholic Worker Movement is a decentralized, grassroots Catholic movement founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the midst of the Great Depression. It is a network of autonomous houses of hospitality, farming communes, and intentional communities committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and direct hospitality for the homeless, hungry, and forsaken. Centered on the practice of the Works of Mercy and on what Day called 'a revolution of the heart,' the movement also engages in nonviolent resistance to war, racism, and economic injustice. Each Catholic Worker house is independently run with no formal membership, no central authority, and no paid staff — a structure that has allowed the movement to spread across the United States and to more than a dozen countries while remaining radically local in character.
Mission
To "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ" through the daily practice of the Works of Mercy, hospitality to those on the margins, voluntary poverty, nonviolence, and the creation of 'a new society within the shell of the old.' Dorothy Day summarized the program simply: 'Our rule is the works of mercy. It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence.'
- Founded
- 1933
- Founder
- Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin
- Leader
- None (the movement is intentionally leaderless and has no central authority; Dorothy Day, co-founder, edited The Catholic Worker newspaper from 1933 until her death in 1980. Her cause for canonization is open in the Archdiocese of New York, where she holds the title 'Servant of God.' Peter Maurin, co-founder, died in 1949.)
- Reach
- The official Catholic Worker directory lists roughly 187 autonomous communities in the United States (in nearly every state), plus affiliated houses in Australia, Canada (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec), England, Scotland, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, and Uganda. Wikipedia and outside reporting describe the total as 'over 200' or 'over 240' communities internationally as of 2023. There is no formal membership roll — the movement has no central organization and houses are self-governing. The Catholic Worker newspaper circulates to readers across the U.S. and abroad, with a circulation of roughly 65,000 copies per issue noted in mid-20th-century appeals.
- Serves
- Anyone in need — the homeless, hungry, exiled, sick, imprisoned, marginalized, refugee, addicted, mentally ill, trafficked, veteran, or spiritually seeking — without regard to religion, race, or documentation. Catholic Workers serve these guests as 'ambassadors of God' and fellow workers, while also running formation programs for the volunteers who live in community with them.
History of the Catholic Worker Movement
The Catholic Worker Movement was born on May Day, 1933, when Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and a handful of companions sold the first 2,500 copies of an eight-page tabloid in Union Square, New York City. Each copy went for a penny — a price that has never changed. Within weeks readers began showing up at the newspaper's Fifteenth Street office asking for food and shelter, and the Catholic Workers could not refuse: what began as journalism quickly became a ministry of hospitality. By the end of 1933 the movement had opened its first women's House of Hospitality in Manhattan and rented a condemned tenement for homeless men. The next year Maurin published his open letter to the bishops proposing houses of hospitality in every diocese as centers of Catholic Action, and the idea spread to Rochester, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and even to England. In the spring of 1936 the New York community moved into 115 Mott Street in Little Italy, where the paper was published and the work of hospitality continued for years. That same year saw the founding of the first farming commune in Easton, Pennsylvania. By 1941 more than 30 affiliated houses existed in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Between 1965 and 1980 another 76 communities were founded, including the 'Hippie Kitchen' on Los Angeles's Skid Row. Dorothy Day edited the paper until her death on November 29, 1980, and the Catholic Worker newspaper has continued without interruption ever since, now in its tenth decade.
- May 1, 1933 – first issue of The Catholic Worker sold in Union Square, NYC
- 1932 – Dorothy Day meets Peter Maurin
- 1933 – first houses of hospitality opened (NYC)
- 1936 – community moves to 115 Mott Street; first farming commune founded in Easton, PA
- 1941 – 30+ affiliated houses worldwide
- 1965–1980 – 76 new communities founded (Vietnam era / hippie era)
- November 29, 1980 – death of co-founder Dorothy Day
- 2002 – Dorothy Day's cause for canonization opened in the Archdiocese of New York
Dorothy Day — Co-founder
Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was a journalist, socialist, and Catholic convert who had been searching for a way to serve the poor and the worker through the Catholic Church when she met Peter Maurin in late 1932. Her conversion (received into the Church in 1927) and the birth of her daughter Tamar in 1926 gave her what she called 'the long loneliness,' and the Catholic Worker was, in her words, 'the answer to a prayer.' She edited The Catholic Worker from its first issue until her death, lived in community at St. Joseph House and Maryhouse on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and was repeatedly jailed for nonviolent protests against war and injustice. In 2002 the Archdiocese of New York formally opened her cause for canonization; she is now titled 'Servant of God.' Her writings (On Pilgrimage, The Long Loneliness, Loaves and Fishes, and selections in the DDLW/Dorothy Day Library and Writings online) remain the movement's most quoted texts.
Peter Maurin — Co-founder
Peter Maurin (1877–1949) was a French 'worker-scholar' who emigrated to the United States and spent years living in voluntary poverty, teaching himself, and proposing a program of Catholic social action rooted in the Gospels, Catholic social teaching, and the personalist philosophy of thinkers such as Jacques Maritain. His 'Easy Essays' — short, rhythmic verse-arguments — summarized ideas on Christian social order, the Works of Mercy, and the 'Green Revolution' of small farming communes. Maurin's four-part program of action became the spine of the movement: (1) roundtable discussions for the 'clarification of thought,' (2) The Catholic Worker newspaper, (3) houses of hospitality, and (4) farming communes. Maurin died in 1949; the 22-acre Peter Maurin Farm on Staten Island, founded in 1950, is named in his honor.
- Easy Essays — short, memorable verse summaries of Catholic social teaching
- Advocate of 'Christ Rooms' in every home and parish
- Proposed four-instrument program still followed by Catholic Worker communities
- Coined 'cult, culture, and cultivation' — prayer, study, and agriculture
What the Catholic Worker Believes
Peter Maurin distilled Catholic Worker convictions into a brief creed, still printed on the movement's website as 'What the Catholic Worker Believes.' Dorothy Day called this the program's 'creed' and 'our rule.' The six (sometimes seven, with 'clarification of thought' added) beliefs link ancient Catholic doctrine to a radical practice of neighbor-love.
- 1. Gentle personalism of traditional Catholicism
- 2. Personal obligation of looking after the needs of our brother
- 3. Daily practice of the Works of Mercy (corporal and spiritual)
- 4. Houses of Hospitality for the immediate relief of those who are in need
- 5. Farming Communes where each one works according to his ability and gets according to his need
- 6. Creating a new society within the shell of the old, with the philosophy of the new (which is, in Maurin's phrase, 'a philosophy so old that it looks like new')
- 7. Clarification of thought through roundtable discussions (often listed as a seventh pillar)
The Works of Mercy
Drawn from Matthew 25 and the ancient Christian tradition, the Works of Mercy are the operating program of the Catholic Worker. Dorothy Day wrote that the Works of Mercy are 'the program' of the movement and the opposite of 'the works of war.'
- Corporal Works of Mercy: feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; shelter the homeless / welcome the stranger; visit the sick; visit the imprisoned; bury the dead
- Spiritual Works of Mercy: counsel the doubtful; instruct the ignorant; admonish the sinner; comfort the sorrowful; forgive injuries; bear wrongs patiently; pray for the living and the dead
Houses of Hospitality
Houses of hospitality are the most recognized expression of Catholic Worker life. They are small, family-style homes — sometimes a brownstone, an apartment, a storefront, or a converted orphanage — where live-in volunteers share prayer, meals, and work with guests who have no place else to go. As the movement's own description says, the houses 'will bring workers and scholars together… will emphasize personal action, personal responsibility as opposed to political action and state responsibility. They will care for the unemployed and teach principles of cooperation and mutual aid.' Dorothy Day emphasized 'littleness': houses range in capacity from a handful of guests to (rarely) two hundred and fifty, but the ideal is for each house to be run on a family plan rather than as an institution. Across the United States and abroad, Catholic Worker houses offer overnight shelter, daytime hospitality, food and clothing distribution, showers, laundry, hospice, mutual aid, legal aid, medical care, prison ministry, refugee support, retreats, addiction recovery, and many other services — every house choosing the work that fits its neighborhood and its gifts. The official community directory lists more than 35 service categories a house might provide.
- Maryhouse (NYC) – women and families
- St. Joseph House (NYC) – men
- Haley House / Boston Food Project (Boston, MA) – oldest soup kitchen
- Casa & JPII Farm (Kansas City, MO) – hospitality and land-based community
- Cherith Brook (Kansas City, MO) – gardens, showers, anti-nuclear witness
- Hippie Kitchen / Los Angeles Catholic Worker (LA) – founded in a van, 1970s
- Simone Weil Catholic Worker (Portland, OR)
- Uganda Catholic Worker (Kampala)
- Australia, Canada (BC, MB, ON, QC), England, Scotland, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Sweden communities listed on the directory
Farming Communes & the Land
Peter Maurin's fourth pillar — the farming commune — was meant to balance the urban houses by providing respite, retreat, and a setting for the 'cult, culture, and cultivation' of prayer, study, and agriculture. The first Catholic Worker farm was established in 1936 in Easton, Pennsylvania; it sheltered the mentally and physically challenged, hosted retreats, canned food for city breadlines, and held study groups, establishing the hallmarks of later farms. In 1950 the New York houses moved to a 22-acre plot on Staten Island named Peter Maurin Farm, which became one of the movement's most successful agricultural ventures and inspired a wave of farms in the decades that followed. Today Catholic Worker farms and gardens operate from coast to coast. In the Driftless region of the upper Midwest, the New Hope (IA), Lake City (MN), Ananthoth (Luck, WI), and St. Isidore (Cuba City, WI) communities share seeds, volunteers, and protests against frack-sand mining and pipelines. Many urban houses — Cherith Brook's vegetable beds, the McKinley Garden at Haley House, the JBJ Soul Home in Philadelphia — now incorporate agriculture into city ministry. Catholic Worker farms typically welcome interns and apprentices on seasonal schedules and host retreats.
- Easton Farm (1936–c.1945) – first Catholic Worker farm, Pennsylvania
- Peter Maurin Farm (Staten Island, 1950–) – named for the co-founder
- Maryfarm (Newburgh, NY) – retreat center and farm
- St. Isidore Farm (Cuba City, WI)
- New Hope Catholic Worker (near Dubuque, IA)
- Ananthoth Community Farm (Luck, WI)
- Lake City Catholic Worker Farm (MN)
- Casa & JPII Farm (Kansas City, MO)
- Oxbow Farm – agroecology apprenticeship host
- Cherith Brook urban garden (Kansas City, MO) – including composted elephant-manure compost from the local zoo
The Catholic Worker Newspaper
The newspaper is the heart of the movement. Founded on May Day 1933, it is published seven times a year by the two Catholic Worker houses in New York City (Maryhouse and St. Joseph House) and has sold for a penny a copy since its first issue. Contributors have included Thomas Merton, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Jacques Maritain, Ammon Hennacy, and many others. The masthead tradition includes Peter Maurin's 'Easy Essays' and Dorothy Day's 'On Pilgrimage' column. After Day's death in 1980 the paper continued under a rotating group of editors — today, as reported by U.S. Catholic (2024), the staff continues to lay out the paper by hand rather than rely on production software. A year's domestic subscription remains 25 cents (30 cents foreign); all donations beyond the subscription price go to the hospitality houses associated with the paper.
- First issue: May 1, 1933, 2,500 copies in Union Square
- Price: one cent per copy (still)
- Frequency: 7 issues per year
- Subscription: 25¢/yr domestic, 30¢/yr foreign
- Publisher: Maryhouse & St. Joseph House, 36 East First St., NYC
- Editors: Dorothy Day (1933–1980); subsequent community editors
- Print archives available at the Catholic News Archive (Marquette University)
Nonviolent Resistance & Protest
Day and Maurin insisted that the Catholic Worker is not just a charity but a movement for peace and justice. Catholic Workers have been conscientious objectors in every U.S. war since the 1940s and have been repeatedly jailed for acts of protest against war, nuclear weapons, racism, abortion (at clinics, by some members), immigration raids, and environmental injustice. Anne Klejment of the University of St. Thomas has described the movement as a form of Christian anarchist activism in which the state 'forfeited its ultimate authority over the citizen.' Houses continue to organize protests, marches, vigils, and civil disobedience today; many list 'Resistance & Protests' and issue-focus categories such as 'Environmental justice' and 'Peace/Anti-war' in the community directory.
- Picket lines in support of labor unions since the 1930s
- Conscientious objection in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and subsequent conflicts
- Plowshares disarmament actions by Daniel and Philip Berrigan and others in the movement
- Anti-racism witness (civil rights, anti-Klan, solidarity with farm workers)
- Anti-nuclear and anti-war protests (St. Patrick's Cathedral, Fort Drum, Kansas City nuclear parts plant)
- Refugee and asylum accompaniment (RAICES, sanctuary movement)
- Environmental justice (anti-pipeline, anti-frack-sand, climate witness)
Roundtable Discussions & Clarification of Thought
Peter Maurin's first instrument was 'roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought.' These informal study groups bring neighbors, workers, students, and scholars together around a common topic — race, labor, the encyclicals, the works of mercy, current events — to form what Maurin called a coherent 'world view and philosophy.' Dorothy Day emphasized that 'clarification of thought' is the movement's intellectual work and what prevents hospitality from collapsing into mere philanthropy. Maurin's 'Easy Essays' are designed as discussion-starters, summarizing the thought of Catholic personalists and distributists like Chesterton, Belloc, Penty, Maritain, and Berdyaev. Roundtable discussions remain active in nearly every house and are listed as a service category on the official directory.
- Easy Essays by Peter Maurin
- Books to Read list (Maritain, Chesterton, Belloc, Penty, Furfey, Berdyaev)
- Sermon on the Mount / Catholic Worker Manifesto
- Study groups at houses and farms across the country
Finding & Joining a Catholic Worker Community
Because the movement is decentralized, the central website's community directory is the main entry point. It currently lists 187 communities searchable by location, name, and ministry type. Volunteers can browse a regularly updated Volunteer Opportunities page for short- and long-term live-in openings — internships, summer programs, and live-in 'Worker-Scholar' commitments of six months or longer. Each community sets its own rule of life, so the site urges prospective volunteers to read each listing carefully and to contact houses directly. International volunteers (e.g., at the Uganda Catholic Worker) typically contribute a small monthly amount toward meals in addition to their labor. Because most houses are not incorporated as charities, gifts to a community may not be tax-deductible; donors should check each community's status.
- Browse the directory: catholicworker.org/catholic-worker-community-directory
- Volunteer opportunities: catholicworker.org/catholic-worker-volunteer-opportunities
- Donate to a local house or to The Catholic Worker newspaper, 36 East First St., NYC
- Subscribe to the paper (25¢/yr domestic, 30¢ foreign)
- FAQ: catholicworker.org/about-the-catholic-worker-movement/frequently-asked-questions
Dorothy Day's Cause for Canonization & Legacy
In 2002 the Archdiocese of New York formally opened Dorothy Day's cause for canonization, and she is now prayed to as a 'Servant of God' pending further investigation. Peter Maurin's cause has long been a matter of discussion among Catholic Worker scholars and sympathizers; his tomb at Maryfarm is a place of quiet pilgrimage. The Catholic Worker Movement continues to be studied by historians of American Catholicism, anarchism, and pacifism, and remains, as Maurice Isserman and others have noted, 'the most influential radical Catholic movement in U.S. history.'
