New Coordinator of Dorothy Day’s Cause Is Social Justice Veteran

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The cause for the canonization of Dorothy Day has recently gained momentum as the archdiocese hired a coordinator to pull together her vast trove of writings and line up witnesses to be interviewed for the diocesan phase of the campaign.

Jeff Korgen, who has been involved in the social justice ministry of the Church for a long time at Catholic Charities and in other capacities, has been in place since Oct. 28.

“He is an organizer, and right now most of what’s needed for the diocesan phase is organizing all of the materials and all of the witnesses,” explained George Horton, director of Catholic Charities’ Department of Social and Community Relations. “So he brings great skills and we have a long-time relationship through Catholic Charities and through working with the National Pastoral Life Center.”

The cause’s postulator is Msgr. Gregory Mustaciuolo, who is vicar general and chancellor of the archdiocese.

“I’m basically the staff that reports to (Msgr. Mustaciuolo) and I’ll be working with Jeff Korgen,” Horton told CNY.

In 2000, Cardinal O’Connor formally requested the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome consider Dorothy Day for canonization. Upon the congregation’s approval, she was officially named a “Servant of God.” At the time Cardinal O’Connor acknowledged that some might object to him taking up the cause for Ms. Day, a journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert who worked with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement. She has been described variously as a radical, a mystic and a bohemian. She was also a mother and a woman who had procured an abortion prior to her conversion to the Church.

“It has long been my contention that Dorothy Day is a saint—not a gingerbread saint nor a holy card saint—but a modern day devoted daughter of the Church,” wrote Cardinal O’Connor in making his case in March 2000, “a daughter who shunned personal aggrandizement and wished that her work and the work of those who labored at her side on behalf of the poor, might be the hallmark of her life rather than her own self.”

In 2005 the Dorothy Day Guild was established to champion the cause. Horton described the guild’s role as to show popular support for her canonization and said Korgen would primarily be working with the guild as “a source of information.”

“There is an advisory board of the guild that consists of people who were very close to Dorothy Day, who knew her,” Horton explained. “Many of them were at the early meetings of Cardinal O’Connor when the cause was initiated. And many of them have knowledge that’s very, very helpful to this first phase. So he’ll be working more with the advisory board than the guild itself.”

Horton acknowledged the advisory board had been disappointed with the progress thus far and was responsible for the renewed impetus of the cause.

“They were dissatisfied that things were moving so slowly and I think they communicated that well to us,” he said. “And I think we’ve tried to respond to that. The people who are on the advisory board for the most part knew Dorothy very well and believe deeply in her cause for the Church.”

The advisory board last met in October and Horton said there would be another meeting in February. “We went for about a year and a half without a meeting, maybe two years. So we’ve made a commitment to regularize the meetings.”

He acknowledged the cause for Ms. Day’s canonization was moving forward at an auspicious time in the life of the Church, with Pope Francis as pontiff. Dorothy Day, he contended, would be the pope’s kind of saint. “There are many parallels—his emphasis on mercy and her practice of the works of mercy so deeply embedded in her life,” he said.

It could also be argued that Dorothy Day—feisty, opinionated, and open, especially to people of the Jewish faith—would be the quintessential New York saint too. “She was very strong willed and in that sense I would agree, she was a New Yorker,” Horton said.

He also said it was important that she was a woman and a laywoman. Of course, she was known to scoff at the idea of being put forward as a candidate for sainthood, famously saying “don’t trivialize me by trying to make me a saint.” Cardinal O’Connor didn’t see that as an obstacle, and neither does Horton.

“Well, first of all she loved saints,” he argued. “She had great devotion to the Little Flower (St. Therese of Lisieux). So she loved saints. The interpretation that I find most apropos was she meant, ‘Don’t give up your responsibility by making me a saint.’ In other words you could say, well, Dorothy Day’s a saint. We can’t live up to that. She believed every person was called by the Gospel to be present to the core and she didn’t want people to slough off their obligations that easily.

“But I think she loved the Church and I believe if she knew the Church was trying to canonize her she would, and this is my speculation, but she would say my love for the Church says that that must be OK.”