Rome, Italy, Feb 22, 2019 / 05:02 am
American women from the Catholic Worker Movement are in Rome this week to pray for the Vatican's sexual abuse summit in emulation of Dorothy Day's Roman pilgrimage to fast and pray for peace.
"We've all been very deeply grieved by the sex abuse crisis, and the crisis it has created for the entire Church," Catholic Worker Movement leader Johanna Berrigan told CNA Feb. 21.
"It just dawned on us that this would be an important time to be in Rome, to bear witness to the suffering Church that we care deeply about and … we wanted to address ways for reform," she said.
Through her involvement in the Catholic Worker Movement, a group dedicated to aiding and advocating for the poor, Berrigan co-founded the Catholic Worker Free Clinic for homeless and uninsured adults in Philadelphia in 1991 and opened another medical clinic in Haiti in 2005.