Pax Christi is honored with first Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award as global conflicts spike
June 13, 2024 at 12:18 p.m.
OSV News– A famous saying attributed to Dorothy Day, the 20th-century Catholic peace activist and potentially future saint, states, "If peace is to be built, it must start with the individual. It is built brick by brick."
For more than 50 years, Pax Christi USA – the national Catholic peace movement founded in 1972, grounded in the Gospel and Catholic social teaching – has dedicated itself to the construction of a world without conflict.
On June 11 – at a breakfast before the annual spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Louisville, Kentucky – Pax Christi received the inaugural Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award from the Dorothy Day Guild. The award was entrusted to Bishop John E. Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, bishop president of Pax Christi's national council, who had accepted the award on behalf of the organization.
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, is pictured in an undated photo. On June 11, 2024, at a breakfast ahead of the annual spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Louisville, Ky., Pax Christi USA received the inaugural Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award from the Dorothy Day Guild. (OSV News photo/courtesy Milwaukee Journal)hand out
The Dorothy Day Guild supports and advances Day's cause for sainthood, initiated by the Archdiocese of New York in 2000.
Day (1897-1980), a Catholic journalist and social activist, in 1933 co-founded with Peter Maurin the Catholic Worker Movement, whose 187 intentional communities are committed to nonviolence, voluntary prayer and hospitality for the homeless and marginalized.
"With so many conflicts in the world today, we thought it could be a sign of hope," Deirdre Cornell, co-chair of the Dorothy Day Guild executive committee and managing editor of Maryknoll Magazine, told OSV News. "We could connect Dorothy's commitment to peace and justice with the Catholic social teaching that very directly addresses peace and justice."
Cornell said the world "really needs this witness of people who call our attention to the possibility of using nonviolent means to address conflict – not to ignore conflict, but who have the courage to say, are there other ways to stop violence?"
The award comes as a new report by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo published June 10 confirmed the world saw in 2023 the most armed conflicts – 59 conflicts globally with 28 in Africa – than any other year since World War II (1939-1945) ended.
"A very essential part of Dorothy Day's vision and legacy is her commitment to peace and justice – using especially nonviolent means of achieving peaceful and just situations," Cornell said.
"So, as we look at how to bring her legacy into the future – and how to promote what she stood for – we feel that peace is such a need in our time; in our world. And we thought it was a very opportune moment to lift up this aspect of Dorothy's vision," Cornell said.
"She of course is very well known for her service to the poor; she is very well known for living a life of voluntary simplicity, or poverty, herself. But," Cornell added, "the peace aspect is one that we do not want to see forgotten."
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OSV News– A famous saying attributed to Dorothy Day, the 20th-century Catholic peace activist and potentially future saint, states, "If peace is to be built, it must start with the individual. It is built brick by brick."
For more than 50 years, Pax Christi USA – the national Catholic peace movement founded in 1972, grounded in the Gospel and Catholic social teaching – has dedicated itself to the construction of a world without conflict.
On June 11 – at a breakfast before the annual spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Louisville, Kentucky – Pax Christi received the inaugural Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award from the Dorothy Day Guild. The award was entrusted to Bishop John E. Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, bishop president of Pax Christi's national council, who had accepted the award on behalf of the organization.
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, is pictured in an undated photo. On June 11, 2024, at a breakfast ahead of the annual spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Louisville, Ky., Pax Christi USA received the inaugural Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award from the Dorothy Day Guild. (OSV News photo/courtesy Milwaukee Journal)hand out
The Dorothy Day Guild supports and advances Day's cause for sainthood, initiated by the Archdiocese of New York in 2000.
Day (1897-1980), a Catholic journalist and social activist, in 1933 co-founded with Peter Maurin the Catholic Worker Movement, whose 187 intentional communities are committed to nonviolence, voluntary prayer and hospitality for the homeless and marginalized.
"With so many conflicts in the world today, we thought it could be a sign of hope," Deirdre Cornell, co-chair of the Dorothy Day Guild executive committee and managing editor of Maryknoll Magazine, told OSV News. "We could connect Dorothy's commitment to peace and justice with the Catholic social teaching that very directly addresses peace and justice."
Cornell said the world "really needs this witness of people who call our attention to the possibility of using nonviolent means to address conflict – not to ignore conflict, but who have the courage to say, are there other ways to stop violence?"
The award comes as a new report by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo published June 10 confirmed the world saw in 2023 the most armed conflicts – 59 conflicts globally with 28 in Africa – than any other year since World War II (1939-1945) ended.
"A very essential part of Dorothy Day's vision and legacy is her commitment to peace and justice – using especially nonviolent means of achieving peaceful and just situations," Cornell said.
"So, as we look at how to bring her legacy into the future – and how to promote what she stood for – we feel that peace is such a need in our time; in our world. And we thought it was a very opportune moment to lift up this aspect of Dorothy's vision," Cornell said.
"She of course is very well known for her service to the poor; she is very well known for living a life of voluntary simplicity, or poverty, herself. But," Cornell added, "the peace aspect is one that we do not want to see forgotten."