The Catholic Worker is a
newspaper published 7 times a year by the
Catholic Worker Movement community in
New York City. The newspaper was started by
Dorothy Day and
Peter Maurin to make people aware of
church teaching on
social justice. Day said the word "Worker" in the paper's title referred to "those who worked with hand or brain, those who did physical, mental, or spiritual work. But we thought primarily of the poor, the dispossessed, the exploited." When
Communism was popular in the United States during the
Great Depression, Day and Maurin wanted to teach what they thought was a well kept secret: the very progressive teaching of the church, so that the poor, mostly
Catholic, would turn to their own tradition for the solution.