“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Former slave Julia Greeley and journalist Dorothy Day—diverse Catholic laywomen from different eras—boldly lived the Gospel in unique ways that changed lives and made for a more just society.
Greeley, an unschooled woman of meager means, carried out spiritual and corporal works of mercy that brought hope to Denver residents at the turn of the 20th century. Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement, was stirred by her conscience to highlight and address poverty and oppression across the nation, then in the grips of the Great Depression, starting in New York City.
Today, they are both recognized as Servants of God by the Catholic Church. Like other holy men and women, they exemplified the principles of Catholic social teaching: freedom, perseverance, hope, justice, and conscience.
The faithfulness of these heroes bears witness that, urged by their faith, God’s grace empowers ordinary Christians to do extraordinary deeds. Their example can inspire us to realize our own call to holiness and be the light in this world God intends us to be.
From Former Slave to Angel of Charity: Julia Greeley
As a child, Julia Greeley lost an eye to a slave master’s whip. After arriving in Denver from Missouri as a free, middle-aged woman in about 1878, she converted to Catholicism. Thereafter a daily communicant, she answered the cruelty and injustice she had experienced with an astonishing mission of charity and evangelization.
She worked as a domestic; lived simply; and bought, begged or found goods she gave to others—often at night to avoid embarrassing the recipients, especially if they were white. Each first Friday of the month, despite rampant arthritis, she walked to the city’s 20 fire stations to give Sacred Heat prayer pamphlets to the firemen to help them prepare for possible death in their risky jobs. She called these pamphlets “tickets to heaven.”
Her works led to her being called “Denver’s Angel of Charity” and “Apostle of the Sacred Heart.”
When she died on the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1918, for five hours, people of all stations turned out to pay their respects to beloved “Old Julia” as she lay in state. She is the only person honored by being entombed at Denver’s Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
From Radical to Catholic Worker Co-Founder: Dorothy Day
On Dec. 8, 1932, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 35-year-old Dorothy Day prayed in the crypt church of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Freelancing for Catholic magazines, she had just covered a communist-organized hunger march highlighting the plight of the unemployed. In solidarity with the protestors, most of whom were not communist, the former radical, now Catholic convert was desperate to do more for them.
She sent up a grief-stricken prayer: “a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor,” she later recalled. “And when I returned to New York, I found Peter Maurin.”
Day saw the former Christian Brother, who had a vision to build a society based on Catholic social teaching, as the answer to her prayers. The 55-year-old French immigrant saw Day as God’s answer to his own plea for a collaborator.
On May 1, 1933, they launched the Catholic Worker newspaper for a penny a copy to help people think according to Gospel values. Soon after came houses of hospitality, to feed and shelter the needy, and farming communes, where people could “return to the land.” The Catholic Worker movement was born, and it continues today.
Roxanne King is an award-winning freelance writer and former longtime editor of the Denver Catholic Register. Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights is her first book. She and her hubby Chuck live in Denver near their two sons’ families. When not writing or doing Biblical School homework, book club reading or the parish bulletin, she can be found enjoying their seven grandchildren, sewing, quilting or doing needlework, or watching a good mystery with her hubby and cats Cosmos and Caspar. Their dog Charlotte guards them all well.