Jesus “came to bring fire: the fire of God’s love on earth and the fire of desire in our hearts,” Pope Leo said. Peace is not the same as “inert calm” where we are “left in peace,” Pope Leo said. “The peace Jesus brings is like a fire and asks much of us. Above all, it asks us to take a stand.”
“Dorothy Day took a stand,” Pope Leo said. “She saw that her country’s development model didn’t create equal opportunities for everyone; she understood that for too many, the dream was a nightmare; that as a Christian, she had to engage with workers, migrants, and those rejected by a killing economy. She wrote and served: it’s important to unite mind, heart, and hands. This is taking a stand.”
Day, who lived from 1897-1980 and was co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, became a Catholic in 1927. Her cause for sainthood officially opened in 2000, and Pope Francis included her as one of the four “great Americans” he spoke about when he addressed the U.S. Congress in 2015. In a forward to a new edition of Day’s memoir on her conversion, “From Union Square to Rome,” Pope Francis in 2023 called Day “a great witness to faith, hope and charity in the 20th century.”
Through her journalism, Day “thought and made others think,” Pope Leo said. “Writing is important. And so is reading, today more than ever.”
She also helped the needy through her Catholic Worker Movement, Pope Leo added, saying, “Dorothy served meals, gave clothes, dressed and ate like those she served: she united mind, heart, and hands. In this way, hope is taking a stand.”
Her Catholic Worker houses, which continue today, are “centers of charity and justice where they can call each other by name, get to know each other one by one, and transform indignation into communion and action,” Pope Leo said. “This is what peacemakers are like: they take a stand and bear the consequences, but they move forward. To hope is to take a stand, like Jesus, with Jesus. His fire is our fire. May the Jubilee rekindle it in us and in the entire Church!”