The Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House of Corpus Christi was founded by Sarah Ann Fitz.
Passing through Corpus Christi in 1991 on a peace walk to Central America, she fell in love with the area and founded the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House on South Carrizo Street as a house of hospitality which she shared with recovering alcoholics until her passing in 2021.
With help from the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, Holy Cross, St. Thomas Moore, and St. Phillips, among other parishes, and her many friends from the recovery community, she began to serve the homeless on our streets. Serving boiled eggs and tortillas out of a donated bread truck, she became known as “the egg lady” on the streets. She became a mentor, not only to the poor on the streets but especially to those who became rich in the joy of giving with her. She visited with women in the local jails taking the message of sobriety and a better life to those most in need. Her establishment of the Maurin-Day House on Leopard Street eventually became the Mother Teresa Day Shelter.
A convert to Catholicism, Ann began writing a monthly column in the diocesan newspaper, the South Texas Catholic in 1996. Her articles revealed her love of the Gospels and taught us to “walk the walk”. The articles were published monthly until 2010 and were recently compiled in a book for her 90th birthday. Love lifted me … excepts of which are available here under Ann’s writings.
For the past several years she served Sunday breakfast from her home at the Catholic Worker alternating Sundays with friends from other parishes. Every service would bring volunteers of all ages to help feed and clothe anyone in need and hundreds would show up to enjoy coffee and plates of hot biscuits and gravy.
Her work continues today at the Dorothy Day House housing people in recovery and serving and in the hearts of the countless friends she met and inspired along the way.