The Catholic Worker Returns to Staten Island

The Catholic Worker Movement has returned to Staten Island, 60 years after the Worker’s last house of hospitality on the island—Peter Maurin Farm—closed.

Staten Island was an important place for Dorothy Day, who lived there with her common-law husband, Forster Batterham. She converted to Catholicism while living there, and she and her daughter Tamar were both baptized at Our Lady, Help of Christians, in Tottenville, on Staten Island.

Day kept a house on Staten Island throughout most of her life–a place of retreat and solitude–as the island at the time was remote beach and farmland. In 1950, the New York community opened up Peter Maurin Farm on Staten Island; the farm baked bread for the soup line down on Mott Street. In 1964, the Verrazano Bridge made Staten Island accessible from Brooklyn and began its rapid development from farmland into suburbs. The community sold Peter Maurin Farm in 1964. (See Day’s March 1964 column about the move.) 

But Day and the New York community bought houses on Staten Island in what was known as Spanish Camp until the 1990s. The cottage Frank Donovan bought for the Worker, which Dorothy Day used as a retreat, was bulldozed by a developer in 2001, while its landmark status was being considered, according to Catholic Workers Pat and Kathleen Jordan.

But, over the past few months, a new Catholic Worker has slowly begun taking shape on Staten Island, starting with shared meals and roundtable discussions. Most importantly, says founder Debbie Sucich, the new community gives local Catholics on Staten Island the chance to put their faith into action. 

“Besides Catholic Charities, there is no hands—on Catholic outreach on Staten Island,” said Sucich in a phone call. And she found there weren’t a lot of opportunities for young people and suburban parishioners on the Island. “There’s really not a structured way for regular, hands-on works of mercy,” she said. They hope to remedy that.

Sucich was born on Staten Island and joined the Catholic Worker Movement in December 2021, moving into St. Joseph House of Hospitality on East First Street. The Catholic Worker moved into St. Joseph House in 1968, after New York City claimed the former house on Chrystie Street–one Dorothy often noted as her favorite—through eminent domain. It housed the community until 1975, when Maryhouse was finished and Day and The Catholic Worker newspaper moved out of St. Joe’s second floor into Maryhouse.

Today, Maryhouse has a specific ministry to women and is known as the women’s house, although men and women have lived in both houses over the past 20 years. Sucich lived on the women’s floor at St. Joe’s for two years, living through the final waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and watching the community change. She spent six months helping out at a Catholic Worker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at the beginning of 2023. 

During her six-month commitment in Lancaster, Sucich said she kept up her efforts to organize and educate about the Catholic Worker on Staten Island. Throughout her time in Lancaster, she wrote newsletters to distribute at the 20 remaining churches on Staten Island (consolidated from the 30 that used to populate the island). Last summer, Sucich returned to Staten Island, where she had felt a strong desire to bring the Catholic Worker to the borough.

“It’s my hometown—and it was Dorothy’s—and so I really felt like the timing was right,” Sucich said, “Staten Island needs this.”

Sucich isn’t alone in that sentiment. Auxiliary Bishop of New York Peter Byrne has been supportive of her efforts and, Sucich said, helped them cut through some red tape and liability issues to host their monthly meals in a parish hall.

They began their hospitality with a holiday meal on New Year’s Day this year, “There were about 50 guests who also took home food to go as well as goodie bags, winter giveaways, and door prizes,” Sucich said. They staffed information tables that offered information about spiritual, mental and physical health resources.

And Sucich said they’ve received many gifts. A local parishioner has offered his house for short-term hospitality and another generous donor made them a shiny new website pro bono. One of Sucich’s friends filed the incorporation paperwork for her while she was still living at St. Joe’s in New York City. They are applying for grants to rent a house for hospitality, so they decided to incorporate as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Since then, they have started monthly meals. A member of the community has been hosting roundtable discussions in his house. In April, they are hosting a crafts fair and an art show to fundraise for the community.

Their hospitality to regular overnight guests has been limited by a common Catholic Worker problem–the lack of a permanent house they own themselves. But they are actively pursuing funding to open a men’s house and a women’s house. Sucich sees a great need for housing for men and women who have aged out of the foster care system.

“We were thinking of serving that community because that touches on human trafficking, incarceration and juvenile delinquency. So we figured, that’s something that touches every aspect of social justice,” Sucich said. 

Staten Island has the lowest amount of foster families in all five boroughs, Sucich said, and many of the children who need foster care on Staten Island have to leave the borough. They’re hoping to start a foster care support network to educate and form families interested in hosting children in the foster care system.

Sucich said that their monthly meals, for the time being, are being offered at St. Peter’s Church on Staten Island–the flagship Church, she said, a short walk away from the ferry terminal where the Staten Island ferry—including one ferry named for Dorothy Day land 117 times a day.

Sucich said that the shelters on Staten Island are under-resourced and overcrowded and many of the homeless folks who are on the street sleep at the ferry terminal each night. She hopes the monthly meal can become weekly. 

But even more than offering services to those in need, she feels the Catholic Worker is an essential organ to helping Staten Island’s Catholics actually put their faith into action and encounter the poor.

“We want to give people the chance to live out the Gospel in a more radical way rather than just giving money,” said Sucich. She said the goal of their community meals was to serve a need, foster encounter, and build relationship. “We could have a community meal where people could sit down and talk and get to know each other,” she said.

All photos courtesy of the Staten Island Catholic Worker.