On May 1 1933, in a communist rally in New York's Union Square, #DorothyDay and a small team of volunteers distributed the first issue of the #CatholicWorker. She described its purpose in her first editorial, written, along with the rest of the paper, on her kitchen table:
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"For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight, [or] huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain [or] walking the streets in the all but futile search for work [or thinking] there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight—...
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"...this little paper is addressed. It is printed to call their attention
to the fact that the Catholic church has a social program—to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual but for their material welfare."
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Acknowledging the paper's precarious status, she said it was "cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered the earth with no place to lay His Head," and that the disciples "wandered through cornfields picking the ears from the stalks wherewith to make their frugal meals."
The Catholic Worker lives on, today celebrating 86 years of precarious existence, fulfilling Dorothy's hope to "make a synthesis reconciling body and soul, this world and the next."
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