NEW YORK (RNS) — Jane Sammon was terrified the first time she met Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker founder now being considered for sainthood by Rome.
“ I was at the front mopping the floor, and I thought my stomach would drop out,” Sammon said. “It’s like that saying, ‘Jesus is coming look busy,’ you know? Well, Dorothy is coming, look busy!”
It was 1972, and at 25, Sammon had traveled from Cleveland, Ohio, to St. Joseph’s House, a house of hospitality in Manhattan run by Dorothy Day and other members of the Catholic Worker, eager to see a place where Catholics were standing “unequivocally” against the Vietnam War. Staying with friends in Brooklyn, Sammon one day decided to visit St. Joseph’s House on E 1st Street. The rest, she said, is something of a mystery.
Decades later, Sammon is the only member still living in the movement’s New York Houses of Hospitality who lived and worked alongside Day, a woman known worldwide for feeding the poor and advocating for workers’ rights. Since 1933, when The Catholic Worker newspaper was founded, the world around the movement has changed, but Sammon says Day’s presence still looms large.
“ I don’t think anybody else in this house could say they knew Dorothy in the flesh,” Sammon said. “But for me, and this is the big thing, I th …