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Here is a selection of Dorothy Day’s “On Pilgrimage” columns published in The Catholic Worker newspaper during the last decade of her life. Highlights are reports from her travels around the world, including Tanzania and the Soviet Union; arrest with the farmworkers at age 75; a standoff with the IRS over refusal to pay federal income tax; the end of the Vietnam War; speaking at the Eucharistic Congress; opening a new house of hospitality for homeless women; and the slow, inexorable journey toward the culmination of her “pilgrimage” in 1980. After the tumult of the 1960s, Dorothy welcomed in the 70s with  the signs of constructive work, pointing to an alternative society. These writings are a  moving testament to a life among the poor, her work as a prophetic peacemaker, her model as a new kind of saint for our times.

Dorothy Day (1897-1980), founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was singled out by Pope Francis in his address to Congress, as one of four “great Americans” who offer us a new way of seeing and interpreting reality. Her cause for canonization is in process. Her Orbis titles include Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, Loaves and Fishes, From Union Square to Rome, (with Peter Sicius) Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World; and On Pilgrimage: The Sixties.

Robert Ellsberg, editor: This is the fifth volume of writings by Dorothy Day he has edited, following her Selected Writings, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day; All the Way to Heaven: Selected Letters of Dorothy Day, and On Pilgrimage: The Sixties. This decade covers the five years he spent as part of the Catholic Worker community, including two years as managing editor of The Catholic Worker.

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