The daughter of a journalist, Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn but grew up in the Midwest and studied at the University of Illinois. Day returned to New York in 1915, where she worked for socialist and communist newspapers until those publications were suppressed by the government.

While unmarried, Dorothy Day had a daughter, whom she named Tamar Therese. Soon after her child’s birth, Day turned toward the Catholic Church, in part because of a religious sister she met in the hospital and a Catholic family she had lived with.

In 1933, she began the Catholic Worker Movement with writer Peter Maurin. Together they published their own newspaper called The Catholic Worker, which still sells for a penny a copy today. And together they opened the first of several houses of hospitality, feeding people who were unemployed and hungry.

By the time of her death in 1980, Dorothy Day had spent forty-five years in the Catholic Worker Movement, advocating voluntary poverty, participating in bread lines and soup kitchens, and fighting for Catholic social principles.

Family Activity

	Plan a service project with your children that you can do together as a family on a monthly basis.

	•		Discuss a possible project with children. To get ideas flowing, offer several ideas of your own, such as sending monthly cards to shut-ins, or preparing monthly desserts for meal sites.
	•		Select a project that is practical for your own home situation.
	•		Toward the end of the month, assess the value of the project for your family and those to whom it is directed.

See the Liturgical Calendar on this site for additional information.
See also Catechist—Lent or Teacher—Lent for Liturgy.