St. Martin de Porres CW
St. Martin de Porres is a Catholic Worker community located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Catholic Worker has 90-year history in Harrisburg, when Mary Frecon founded Blessed Martin de Porres Catholic Worker in 1938 at 7th Street and Herr, among the residents of the 8th Ward, displaced by the construction of the capitol complex. Mary—called Mama Mary by her children, neices, and grandchildren and great-grand nieces—ran the Catholic Worker in Harrisburg until 1952.
The mission of the Catholic Worker was reawakened by the founding of Pax Christi in Harrisburg and the volunteers at the St. Francis of Assisi Soup Kitchen, which was founded in 1981. St. Martin de Porres House at 1440 Market Street was founded in 1996 by Bruce Houston and another Catholic Worker. Naed Smith, the long-time Catholic Worker who was the face of St. Martin de Porres House for two decades, moved to Allison Hill in 1999. The house incorporated as a charitable organization in the State of Pennsylvania in 2000. We are not a 501(c)3. You can read more about the Catholic Worker movement’s stance against incorporation and the “non-profit industrial complex” on CatholicWorker.org.
Naed Smith passed away too soon on May 10, 2019. You can read Naed’s obituary in The Burg here and several Catholic Workers tributes to and remembrances of Naed in The Catholic Worker here.
Kirk Hallett, founder of The Joshua Group, and a long-time member of St. Francis of Assisi Church, helped clean up the house and steward its mission in the years following Naed’s death and during the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Kevin Fox, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame from New Jersey, moved into the house and began working at Joshua Group’s after school program, serving at the St. Francis Soup Kitchen, and bringing a spirit of prayer, hospitality, and Franciscan simplicity and care for creation to St. Martin de Porres’ House.
With the help of volunteers from the University of Notre Dame Club, he restored the Catholic Worker’s backyard farm, clearing out the trash heaps (and pestering the city to haul away a large white van used for human trafficking), adding raised beds and—with the help of a generous donor—installing a new fence. Mama Mary Farm, today, thrives as a site of neighborhood food creation and learning for children at Joshua Group. Kevin Fox, also with the help of the Notre Dame Club and Dan Cassidy, rehabilitated the second floor of the house, fixing holes in the plaster, painting, and replacing the floors. Kevin left Harrisburg to begin discernment with the Franciscan Friars (OFM) in the summer of 2024.
The house has slowly been cleaned up so that its first floor has been able to offer a Third Place for the Allison Hill community: a library, café, drop-in center, an organizing space for the local community.
The house accepts donations (socks, underwear, toiletries, housing essentials, etc.) and hands them out to guests and neighbors in need. Monthly Roundtables are on Sundays.
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The St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker has a strong working relationship with its fellow workers for justice on Market Street and across Allison Hill, including the Joshua Group afterschool program, Gather the Spirit for Justice, Christ Lutheran Church, the First Church of the Brethren, the University of Notre Dame Club of Harrisburg, and St. Francis of Assisi Church.
What is the Catholic Worker?
The mission statement, summarized in 140 words:
The Catholic Worker Movement began simply enough on May 1, 1933, when a journalist named Dorothy Day and a philosopher named Peter Maurin teamed up to publish and distribute a newspaper called “The Catholic Worker.” This radical paper promoted the biblical promise of justice and mercy.
Grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person, their movement was committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and the Works of Mercy as a way of life. It wasn’t long before Dorothy and Peter were putting their beliefs into action, opening a “house of hospitality” where the homeless, the hungry, and the forsaken would always be welcome.
Over many decades the movement has protested injustice, war, and violence of all forms. Today there are some 228 Catholic Worker communities in the United States and in countries around the world.
The Catholic Worker Movement described in 140 words
The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Movement
“The vision is this. We are working for “a new heaven and a new earth, wherein justice dwelleth.” We are trying to say with action, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are working for a Christian social order.”
—Dorothy Day, February 1940
The Catholic Worker Movement advocates for personalism, a decentralized society, and a “green revolution”. Catholic Workers strive to accomplish those aims through the means of nonviolence, the works of mercy, manual labor, and voluntary poverty.
The Catholic Worker.org shares more about these aims and purposes. You can also learn about more Catholic Worker communities by following CatholicWorker.org’s newsletter: Roundtable.
Press
January 2026 — “Hope in a Hurting World,” – Diocese of Harrisburg’s Candid Catholic Convos Podcast
July 2024 – “Prayers, Coffee and Toilet Paper,” – The Catholic Witness
March 2023 – “Catholic Worker Journey,” – Kevin Fox at St. Joe’s Lenten Series