Saint Jude Parish Speaker Series is privileged to welcome Robert Ellsberg, who knew Dorothy Day well.

Robert Ellsberg is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Divinity School.
In 1975, he interrupted his studies to become a member of the New York Catholic Worker Community and there, became a Catholic. “I met Dorothy Day when I was 19. I had taken a leave as an undergraduate from Harvard University and made my way to the Catholic Worker headquarters in New York City, drawn by a number of motivations. I was eager to learn something directly about life, apart from books. I was tired of living for myself alone and longed to give myself to something larger and more meaningful. But mostly, I think, I was drawn by the hope of meeting Dorothy Day, the movement’s legendary founder, and still, at 77, editor of its newspaper. I had planned to stay a few months but was pretty quickly hooked and remained for five years - the last five years of Dorothy’s life, as it turned out.” (Robert Ellsberg November 21, 2005)
Mr. Ellsberg is the Editor in Chief and Publisher of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll, as well as having authored several award-winning books.

Together with him, let’s look closer at the life of one of the most challenging and inspiring of modern-day figures, Dorothy Day; this fascinating woman who became the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin, a French Catholic social activist. Ms. Day was born in Brooklyn in 1897 to a modest family. Her father was a journalist so, at a young age, she was already an avid reader and enjoyed writing and also arts and music. As a young adult, she became a journalist, a social activist and was also a bohemian for several years. She gave up the love of her life, and a common law marriage because of her desire to baptize their daughter. In March 1926, her life changed when she encountered a local Catholic religious sister, Sister Aloysia, who educated her in the Catholic faith. On December 28 of the same year, she received conditional baptism in the Catholic Church with Sister Aloysia as her godmother.

From being a radical activist, Dorothy Day is now a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church and received the title of Servant of God in March 2000. During her whole life she stayed close to the poor, the unemployed and the homeless with nonviolent actions on their behalf which resulted her in many arrests or even led her to go on extended hunger strikes. For this reason, we can affirm that she showed a new face of the Gospel for our time. She died on November 29, 1980. Today, 187 Catholic Worker communities in all the world remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken.

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/12/07/dorothy-day-david-brooks-paul-elie-robert-ellsberg-anne-snyder-239419