One of her biographers said: If Dorothy Day is ever canonized, she will be the patron saint not only of homeless people and those who try to care for them, but also of people who lose their temper…

She is little-known over here, but Dorothy Day was famous in the USA during the 20th century – she was a pacifist, an activist, a devout Catholic, someone who was ready to go to jail for her principles. She was a co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, editing and publishing a Catholic newspaper, and also opening ‘houses of hospitality’ to help down-and-outs in New York initially. She oversaw the creation of other such locations all over the world – some of them still exist.

She was born in 1897, and what she achieved in the next 83 years is astonishing. Reading her biography, as I have just done (Dorothy Day, Dissenting Voice of the American Century, by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph) is by turns jaw-dropping, and horrifying, and inspiring, and heart-warming.

Her Houses of Hospitality could be terrifying places. No-one was turned away, and what others would see as the dregs of humanity turned up there: she insisted that every individual was treated with love and respect. The houses could be noisy, dangerous, dirty places. Many many young people and religious came to spend time there to help. Some could only take it for a short time. But Dorothy Day lived and died in her houses for 50 years. Her life was ascetic and lived in poverty.

She was a very devout Catholic, going to Mass every day, but at the same time was forever falling out with senior clerics, who often disapproved of her left wing beliefs. At the same time, those who supported her for her political views could not understand how she could go along with the church’s rigid policies on sexuality and birth control.

She could be difficult or even impossible to work with. But nobody could doubt her commitment, her passion and her essential goodness. She tried to embrace compassion, self-sacrifice, simplicity and prayerful community. When things were going badly – and they often did – she said they must always continue with their work, they must bring love and care to people. It didn’t matter if those people responded badly – like the woman who, at one of the farm communes Day ran, volunteered to do the shopping and took 200 dollars and the car, and was never seen again. It didn’t matter. 

The process is under way to have her declared a saint. She would probably have no time for that: her view was ‘That's the way people try to dismiss you. If you're a saint, then you must be impractical and utopian, and nobody has to pay any attention to you.’ But it would make her better-known and remembered, and that has to be a good thing. She was a quite extraordinary person, and most people would be unable to follow in her footsteps to any degree, she led such an uncompromising, and hard, life. And yet – as you think of how far your own life is from hers, you can still remember this from her philosophy: ‘In the end, Love, effort and faith are all that matter’. We can all try a bit harder.

Moira Redmond