By the time she started The Catholic Worker, Day was a veteran of the activist press of the early 20th century, having worked for left-leaning, populist publications like The Masses and The Call. But she had always been drawn to religion. In 1917, when she was on a hunger strike with suffragists in Occoquan Workhouse, a Virginia prison, she asked for a Bible and found solace in reading the Psalms. She began her formal conversion to Catholicism in 1927, after unexpectedly becoming pregnant the year before. But her conversion alienated her from her communist friends—as well her partner, fellow radical Forster Batterham. For the next five years, Day was unsure of how to integrate her faith with her commitments to workers, immigrants, and the poor.
Peter Maurin was a peasant who left his native Lozère in the South of France and had spent more than 20 years struggling to navigate the industrial age: a failed farm in Canada, agricultural work in upstate New York, coal mining in Pennsylvania, and janitorial work and teaching in Chicago. He met Day through the editor of Commonweal, and they set out to educate fellow Catholics about what the intellectual tradition of a faith that was often perceived as rigidly hierarchical had to say about creating a just economic system and honoring the dignity of the worker.
Soon after the newspaper’s founding, the Worker’s editorial staff began feeding the unemployed who flocked to their office. By the seventh issue, in December 1933, they were asking readers to help fund their “cooperative apartment” for out-of-work women. After several moves across downtown Manhattan, the cooperative apartment became the first St. Joseph House of Hospitality, which opened in 1936 on Mott Street. Houses of hospitality are often collectively run homes where single adults live in solidarity with homeless people, immigrants, single parents, or vulnerable adults they invite to live with them. A few houses of hospitality are run by families. Today, there are roughly 200 Catholic Worker houses of hospitality and farms around the world.
But the Worker’s influence over mainstream Catholic culture—as well as secular activist culture—has faded from what it once was. The movement’s flagship newspaper, which once had a six-figure international circulation, has dwindled to approximately 26,000 subscribers.