Peter Maurin

Peter Maurin

1877 - 1949

 

 

 While most people are familiar with the life and passionate ministry of Dorothy Day as a champion of peace and social justice, fewer know the man who inspired, mentored and guided her with his own passion for Christ and thirst for justice and equality by the light of the Gospels. His name was Peter Maurin.

Pierre Maurin was born in the Languedoc region of France, one of 24 children. After a brief stint as a De La Salle brother, Maurin emigrated to Canada where he tried his hand as a sodbuster. The harsh region and isolation proved to be too much and he emigrated to New York and drifted around with no prospects and no faith. A chance reading of the life of St. Francis of Assisi in the 1920s brought about a reconversion and he immersed himself in his recovered faith and the cause of economic and social justice.

He met Dorothy Day in New York in 1932 and fired her with his deep reading and passion for Catholic Social Teaching, Catholic worker movements in France, the writings of G.K. Chesterton and the cause of Distributism, or just redistribution of land and goods among the people.

With Day, Maurin founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 and through their combined journalism not only wrote about social justice via the Gospels but protested labor injustice, stressed hospitality for the poor at the homes and encouraged people once again pursuing an agrarian life in the country and raising their own food with a surplus for the poor.

With the storm clouds of war on the horizon, Maurin and Day began protesting war and calling for peace. Maurin continued to write, protest and travel the country speaking but his health began to fail in the mid 40s. His mental health declined and he died on May 15, 1949, the feast of St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill.