The late Dorothy Day, a champion of the poor and dispossessed, is being considered for canonization by the Catholic Church, with the strong endorsement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, has called her "a saint for our time."
Now, parishioners at the New York City church where Day's relatives say she attended Mass for decades are hoping a little of that heavenly favor can rub off on them.
The Church of the Nativity, which was founded in 1842, is scheduled to close in August, while its congregation moves to the nearby Most Holy Redeemer Church.
Nativity is where Day attended daily Mass until she could no longer walk in the last two years of her life, her granddaughter Martha Hennessy told The Huffington Post. The church hosted Day’s funeral Mass after her death in 1980. This Saturday, parishioners will host a bilingual Mass to highlight and celebrate the famous activist's involvement in their church. They hope the connection with a possible future saint will give some extra force to their petition to "Keep Nativity Open."
Mercedes Sanchez, a member of the congregation who is fighting to save the church, fears the building may be sold to developers due to its “prime real estate” in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“Dorothy Day was about working for the poor and not getting caught up in the world of materialistic things,” Sanchez told The New York Times. “When I think about what’s happening in the church, I think about her. Is this how the hierarchy works? Is the church going to be for the rich?”
Day, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1897, was a journalist and social activist who in the 1930s co-founded the international Catholic Worker Movement, best known for its network of community housing for the homeless. For decades, she lived in two of the first Catholic Worker homes, just around the corner from the Nativity church.
“The basic premise [of the Catholic Worker Movement] is nonviolence, commitment to pacifism, respecting the dignity of work, providing hospitality for the homeless, and providing food for those in the house and those on the street,” said Hennessy, who has worked to carry on her grandmother's legacy. All operations, she said, are based in “Catholic social teaching and gospel teaching.”
Hennessy, who attends Nativity herself when she's in New York, is trained in occupational therapy and recently returned from a service trip in Afghanistan. “From a very early age I was made aware of the suffering of others,” she recalled.
Day has been described as “radical” for her staunch commitment to the poor, her anti-war activism and her involvement with early 20th century socialist movements. But these days, the established church praises her. She represented “what’s best in Catholic life, that ability we have to be ‘both-and,’ not ‘either-or,’” said Cardinal Dolan during a 2012 bishops meeting.
The Dorothy Day Guild, with Hennessy's help, is working to promote the activist’s cause for sainthood. The process of canonization typically involves an investigation by the Catholic Church into whether any miracles have been granted through this candidate’s intercession with God. The church also studies the person’s writings to see if they possess "purity of doctrine."
One difficulty in Day’s case, said Hennessy, is that many of the people who knew her best have died and are unable to give their testimonies. The guild is trying to gather and preserve the eyewitness accounts of those left with a webpage where people can upload their memories of Day's life.
Hennessy has her own memories of her grandmother’s holy qualities. “I often recall an experience I had when I was 3 years old sitting on her lap,” Hennessy said. “I really had a sense of the presence of God somehow. ... She was a pretty extraordinary person.”
The canonization cause, which could take years, has made little progress since then-Cardinal John O'Connor got the ball rolling in 2000, Hennessy said. But the closure of the church where Day worshipped will likely be complete by the end of the summer. It is part of a larger reorganization process by the Archdiocese of New York, which has been in the works for several years, said Father Sean McGillicuddy. As pastor at Most Holy Redeemer Church, McGillicuddy has been overseeing operations at Nativity since March 2014.
Several parishioners, including Sanchez, are requesting permission to appeal the closure decision, which they say they've been denied several times. If Nativity is shuttered, though, they are asking the archdiocese to build a shrine honoring Day's longtime commitment to their church.
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