Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 8, 1897. After the San Francisco earthquake (1906), her family settled in an apartment on the south side of Chicago. At that time he experienced the consequences of his father's having been left without work. At the same time he began to receive positive impressions of Catholicism. When his father was hired as a sportswriter, they moved to the north side of the city. His readings attracted him to the poor.

In 1914 she obtained a scholarship for the University of Illinois. She studied reluctantly, drawn rather to a radical social orientation. Two years later, she dropped out of college and moved to New York, where she found a work as a reporter for The Call, the city's socialist newspaper. She then worked for The Masses, a magazine that opposed U.S. involvement in the European war; in fact, the magazine would be banned shortly thereafter.

In 1917, Dorothy was imprisoned for demonstrating in front of the White House against the exclusion of women in politics. In 1918, she enrolled in a program at training to care for the sick in Brooklyn.

2. Dorothy was convinced that the unjust social order had not changed from the time of her adolescence until her death, although she never identified with any political party. Her spiritual process was slow. As a child she attended liturgical services in the Episcopalian Church. Later, as a young journalist in New York, she would sometimes visit St. Joseph's Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue late at night. 

He was attracted to the Catholic Church for its worship and spiritual discipline . He saw it as "the Church of the immigrants, the Church of the poor".

After a stint in New Orleans, she returned to New York in 1924. She bought a house near the sea in Staten Island and married Forster Batterham, an English botanist, opposed to religion. In March 1927, Tamar Theresa was born and baptized in the Catholic Church. Dorothy had already become pregnant once, years before, as a result of a love affair with a journalist, and had had an abortion, a decision that she would later consider the great tragedy of her life. Tamar's christening was a sign of her desire to believe. "I didn't want my daughter to kick as I had often kicked. I wanted to believe and I wanted and I wanted my daughter to believe, and if belonging to the Church was going to give her such a priceless grace as faith in God, and the loving companionship of the saints, then the thing to do was to baptize her as a Catholic."

3. In fact, she herself was received into the Catholic Church in December of the following year (1928). By then she had broken up with Forster. A new stage was opening in her life where she would try to combine her faith with her radical social values. On December 8, 1932, after anxiously witnessing a hunger march organized by the Communists in Washington, D.C., she entrusted herself to the Immaculate Conception in the National Basilica erected in her honor, asking financial aid to discover the way in which she should help the workers and the poor: "I made a special prayer, with tears and anguish, that some way would be opened to me so that I could use the talents I possessed in favor of my fellow workers, of the poor".

The next day, already in New York, she met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant 20 years her senior. Maurin was a modest worker who had embraced celibacy and the Franciscan spirit of poverty, and had an ideal of a social order imbued with basic Gospel values. He advised Dorothy to start a newspaper of Catholic-social inspiration to collaborate in the peaceful transformation of society. Considered by her as providential, this meeting was the culmination of what her family's past, her experience at work , and her faith had built up.

In May - we are still in 1932 - The Catholic Worker began publication, and by December it had reached a circulation of 100,000. The newspaper challenged ideas about urbanization and industrialization, and encouraged readers' commitment staff . Then came direct attention to the needy: shelter, food and perhaps some pocket change, for an unlimited time. In 1936 there were 33 houses scattered around the country. Once her critics argued with the phrase of Jesus, "there will always be poor among you". She replied: "But we are not happy that there are so many. The class structure is of our own making and with our consent, not God's, and we must do what we can to change it. We are urging revolutionary change.

4. Dorothy Day promoted a way of life opposed to violence. In 1935 The Catholic Worker published a dialogue between a patriot and Christ, in which the patriot dismissed the teaching of Christ as little internship. Dorothy was always opposed to war. This ideal caused her not a few losses among her readers and the closing of some houses of hospitality, especially in the wake of the U.S. entrance in World War II. In the 1950s, he promoted civil disobedience as penance for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, fought against nuclear weapons testing and testing, and fought for human rights at the risk of his life. In the 1960s he traveled to Rome to thank John XXIII for his encyclical Pacem in Terris and to ask for a strong statement from the Second Vatican Council against the war. During the Vietnam War, The Catholic Worker continued to be an active advocate for conscientious objection. In 1973 - Dorothy was 75 years old - she was imprisoned for the last time for supporting the farmers.

In 1967, on the occasion of the International Day of the Laity congress , she was one of the two North Americans who received communion from the hands of Pope Paul VI. On the occasion of her 75th anniversary, the magazine "America" dedicated an article to her, issue, in which she was recognized as the best representative of "the aspiration and action of the North American Catholic community in the last forty years". The University of Notre Dame distinguished her with its Laetare Medal.

Long before her death on November 29, 1980, Dorothy was considered a saint. Her best known words are her curt reply: "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed do easily". That phrase denotes her combative style and also the context that for a long time framed the opinion of many about sainthood: a label that seemed destined for those who had not cared about justice in this world. On March 16, 2000, the Cardinal of New York, John O'Connor, announced the beginning of the cause of canonization of Dorothy Day, since then Servant of God.