"Not Just to Minister to the Slaves, but to Do Away with Slavery"

"An absolute pacifist, she incurred the resentment of Church authorities for opposing U.S. involvement in World War II and subsequent forays into Korea and Indochina. She mentored the Catholic activists who broke into a government office and poured homemade napalm on draft files in 1968 to protest the Vietnam war. And Day was such a resolute champion of labor that, in 1949, she even backed a gravediggers’ strike against a Catholic cemetery in New York City. When the powerful archbishop, Francis Cardinal Spellman, ordered seminary students to break the strike, she denounced him for bringing 'so overwhelming a show of force against a handful of poor working men.' What Spellman did, she added bitterly, was 'a temptation of the devil to that most awful of all wars, the war between the clergy and the laity.'
"Like any good anarchist, Christian or not, Day had no faith whatsoever in the desire or ability of governing authorities to create a moral, egalitarian society. At the recent bishops’ meeting, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago recalled asking her, just after the 1960 election, how she felt about having a Catholic in the White House 'who can fight for social justice.' 'I believe Mr. Kennedy has chosen very badly,' she snapped. 'No serious Catholic would want to be president of the United States.'"

Michael Kazin at The New Republic reports that American bishops have endorsed sainthood for Dorothy Day.