Her life soon changed as the 1910s brought about a stark shift in the U.S. social climate. Day read Upton Sinclair's scathing depiction of the Chicago meat-packing industry in his book called "The Jungle," which marked a turning point in her personal ideology.
She dropped out of college and moved to New York, where she took a job as a reporter for the country's largest daily socialist paper The Call. After fraternizing with the Bohemians and Socialist intellectuals of her time – and after a series of disastrous romances, one of which included a forced abortion by a man who eventually left her – Day fell in love with an anarchist nature-lover by the name of Forster Batterham.
She eventually settled in Staten Island, living a peaceful, slow-paced life on the beach with Batterham in a common law marriage. Conflict arose, however, when Day became increasingly drawn to the Catholic faith – praying rosaries consistently and even having their daughter, Tamar, baptized as a Catholic. Batterham, a staunch atheist, eventually left them and Day was received into the Catholic Church herself in 1927.
She returned to New York City as a single mother where her deep-rooted and long-standing concern for the poor resurfaced. Along with French itinerant Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933. Living the Catholic notion of holy poverty and practicing works of mercy, the two started soup kitchens, self-sustaining farm communities and a daily newspaper. In the course of her 50 years working among the poor and marginalized, Day never took a salary.
Her legacy lives on today in the 185 Catholic Worker communities in the U.S. and around the globe. In 2000, 20 years after her death, then-leader of the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal John O'Connor, submitted Day's cause for canonization to the Vatican. With this approval, she was given the title of Servant of God, which is bestowed on a candidate for sainthood whose cause is still under investigation, prior to beatification.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver marked the occasion of Day's passing 30 years ago by reflecting on her life and work in a Nov. 29 e-mail to CNA.
"Like Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day sought to live the Gospel sine glossa – without 'glosses,' caveats or exceptions," he said. "She was radical in the truest sense of the word, committed to the root of the Christian vocation."