Dorothy Day

Usually, most people think of a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church as being sexually pure, humble, and out of the public eye. Dorothy Day, on the other hand, who established the Catholic Worker movement and was declared a Servant of God by Pope John II, had an illegal abortion in the 1920’s, bore a child out of wedlock to an anarchist lover, and was arrested many times as an anti-war, pro-union, pro-civil rights activist.

Arrested the first time in 1917 for demonstrating for women’s suffrage, Day was still being arrested in 1973 (at the age of 75) when she participated in banned picketing in support of the United Farm Workers. That’s more than fifty years of being willing to go to jail for her beliefs...as well as more than fifty years of incarcerating a woman who may well wind up being recognized as a Catholic Saint one day. Gives one pause, doesn’t it?