That is Michael Sprong, pictured on the left. Michael died on October 16, 2024. I didn't know Michael Sprong, and I wish I had. Compared to me, at least, Michael wasn't that old. He was born in 1963. It turns out there is a website devoted to Michael's life, and you can access it by clicking right here.
I found about Michael's life by way of a tribute published in the January-February 2025 edition of The Catholic Worker newspaper. If you want to read the story of Michael's life, here's the link. I recommend reading the entire tribute, but I am presenting here, for those who might be relunctant to click for the whole thing, the final few paragraphs:
On Michael’s death certificate his official government occupation is listed as humanitarian activist. This sums up Catholic Worker, homemaker, gardener, public speaker, book publisher, editor, organizer, lobbyist, and a dreamer of all sorts.
In the decades in which we both did frequent press interviews, nearly every reporter would ask some form of the same question: “Is this effective?” Of course, they implied in the question that our actions were most certainly not effective. On the surface, we were the champions of lost causes.
The greatest gift of being around Michael Sprong was the elimination of this doubt. He could always find the beauty and meaning in our small efforts. He understood through his own life experience that, in transcendent and mysterious ways, inspirational acts change people. And then, changed people transform the world. This Catholic Worker life made us so much better. All the other good works are gravy.
Michael Sprong, with ever so humble labor by his heart and hands, did indeed help create a world in which it is easier to be good.
The Catholic Worker movement calls people to a life of "voluntary poverty," with that being "a technical term used in Catholic Worker tradition."
Voluntary poverty means "using and owning as little as possible, and that is distinct from 'destitution,' which means having less than one needs, and from poverty that is not of one’s choosing."
Again, I recommend that you read the entire story of Michael Sprong's extraodinary life. It was a rich life, in every sense that matters. It was, inspirationally, a life that I believe almost everyone would agree was a life extraordinarily well-lived.
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