He evidently got the novitiate up there to invite Dorothy and myself to the novitiate for a talk one evening, and so we both arrived there and that’s where I met her personally. I had known about her and read about her because in my younger days as a nurse I had worked with the Catholic Worker in Baltimore when it first started. I volunteered there for a short time while I was doing my studies at Mercy Hospital. 

So I knew about Dorothy and read about her and admired her very much. When she came to Loyola in Baltimore to speak [in 1966], I invited her to Joseph House and she came. But my first meeting with her was at Wernersville.

I admired her ability to live completely with the poor, and to share with them absolutely anything and everything she had. She never kept anything for herself alone. She was the poorest person I think I’ve ever met.

She was also the most selfless person, and I really admired that tremendously. She was so detached. A very detached person, except from her opinions, which she had a right to stand up for. But she was extremely detached. And very humble. But she did have a temper. I saw her one night put a priest in his place because he was speaking against the teachings of the Church. She really put him right where he belonged. She could handle any argument, and any person. But as I said, she was simply, totally unattached to herself.

She was a woman of principle. Never did she come first, she was always last in whatever God’s cause was. So that’s why I admired her. I certainly don’t have her virtues, but I admire them.

So she gave us a talk that night in one of the classrooms. We had a classroom upstairs. And she went to Mass. And when it was over, I put her in one of the back bedrooms where it would be quiet. All my things were very poor, and the room had a little poor rocking chair with no arms on it. And so I went back to see if she wanted anything before she retired. She was sitting in the little rocking chair in her night gown, rocking back and forth, and reading the prayers of the Mass for the next morning and preparing for that.

She really was a very holy person. Extremely holy, very prayerful, and just. Justice was a big thing with her. And justice was a big thing with me, and I think that’s another reason I liked her so much. I didn’t fear poverty as much as I feared injustice for the poor.

I always felt that people who work with the poor should live poor. To work for the poor and try to get them justice, and yet to live on injustice yourself, is not a very good example. I felt that we should not have jobs that were in companies that did not have justice for their workers.

I have always been more devoted to justice than I have been to poverty. I’m not afraid of poverty. I understand that it can be deadly. I understand that it can cripple children’s minds by not having enough money for them to go to school, or the fact that they grow up with poor and ignorant parents who don’t care about them, or don’t know enough to care about them. That’s all a big handicap, but it’s not nearly as deadly as injustice is.

I have always wanted to overcome injustice wherever I have seen it, more so than to overcome material poverty. It’s the same way with the treatment of children by their parents. There can be rich children who suffer just as much injustice as poor children, because many rich children are ignored and abandoned by their parents because they don’t want to spend their time on their kids. 

So the rich kids, outside the fact they don’t suffer from hunger or not being able to go to school, some of them are not much better off than the poor kids are. What we need is justice for children.

Any cause for justice. The same way with justice for animals. I mean, I’m just a justice person. I need justice. For whoever, whatever it is.

The most important thing about justice with me is that God is just, and so it’s one of His attributes that we try to imitate. And as we have seen in our Holy Father, as he said, you can’t have peace without justice. You can’t have peace. Injustice is the cause of every war we’ve ever had. They may have thought of it in another light, but when you get down to analyze any cause of any war, it’s injustice. So if you’re going to have peace, you’ve got to have justice.

And you can never find justice where you find greed. Injustice is related to so many different lacks of virtue, so if you fight for justice itself you will get all the other virtues. That’s another thing that I feel. And St. Joseph, who is certainly the greatest saint outside the Blessed Mother and Christ Himself, is described as a just man. So if he’s a just man he’s got all the virtues.

There are so many injustices in life that bother me to death. It turns me into a warrior. [laughter] It really does, it turns me into a warrior. When I see injustice I become angry, and I would defend anyone with my life to get an injustice righted.

God keeps us going. And He’ll show the way, as He’s always done. He doesn’t publish and He doesn’t use computers, He doesn’t do all those things. You have to keep your eyes peeled for whatever He’s telling you. And your ears open. Because He doesn’t tell you as the world would tell you.