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Dorothy Day ( November 8 , 1897 – November 29 , 1980 ) was an American Journalist turned social activist and devout member of the Catholic Church . She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. Alongside Peter Maurin , she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 , espousing Nonviolence , and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden. Day was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Chicago . In 1914 she went to the University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship, dropping out and moving to New York's Greenwich Village two years later. Day initially lived a bohemian lifestyle, with two common law marriages and an abortion she later wrote about in her semi-autobiographical novel, ''The Eleventh Virgin''. With the birth of her daughter, Tamar, she began a period of spiritual awakening which led her to embrace Catholicism, joining the Church in December 1927 with baptism at Our Lady Help of Christians parish on Staten Island . The Catholic Worker movement started with the '' Catholic Worker '' Newspaper , created to stake out a neutral, Pacifist , even Anarchist position in the increasingly war-torn 1930s . This grew into a "house of hospitality" in the slums of New York City and then a series of farms for the poor to live together communally. The movement quickly spread to other cities in the United States , and to Canada and the United Kingdom ; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941 . Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia , the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany , The Netherlands , the Republic Of Ireland , Mexico , New Zealand , and Sweden . By the 1960s Day was embraced by Catholic s. Yet, although Day had written passionately about women’s rights, Free Love and birth control in the 1910s , she opposed the Sexual Revolution of the sixties, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s , when she had her Abortion . Day had a progressive attitude toward social and economic rights with a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality and piety. In 1972 Day was awarded the Pacem In Terris Award . It was named after a 1963 Encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem In Terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth.' Day is buried in Resurrection Cemetery on Staten Island , just a few blocks from where her beachside cottage once stood where she first became interested in Catholicism. Day was proposed for sainthood by the Claretian Missionaries in 1983. Pope John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open Day's "cause" in March of 2000, calling her a Servant Of God . Her autobiography '', 2005 {Link without Title} . MEMORIALIZATION A named professorship exists in the honor of Dorothy Day at the School of Law of St. John's University , a Catholic university in Queens, New York , United States (currently occupied by labor law scholar David L. Gregory). riteiohttp://stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/law/faculty/profiles/Gregory SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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