[1] Influenced by the contemporary work of G. K. Chesterton and Vincent McNabb,[2] he was one of the foremost promoters of the back-to-the-land movement and of Catholic distributism in the United States.

[4][5] He was born Pierre Joseph Orestide Maurin[6] into a poor farming family in the village of Oultet in the Languedoc region of southern France, where he was one of 24 children.

[7] He briefly moved to Saskatchewan to try his hand at homesteading, but was discouraged both by the death of his partner in a hunting accident and by the harsh conditions and rugged individualism that characterized his years of residence in the region.

[18] For four months after their first meeting, Maurin "indoctrinated" her, sharing ideas, synopses of books and articles, and analyzing all facets of daily life through the lens of his intellectual system.

His ideas served as the inspiration for the creation of "houses of hospitality" for the poor,[21] for the agrarian endeavors of the Catholic Worker farms, and the regular "roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought" that began taking place shortly after the publication of the first issue of The Catholic Worker[22] which is considered a Christian Anarchist publication.

"[T]he paper, declaring its solidarity with labor and its intention of fighting social injustice, was not, by Maurin's standards, a personalist newspaper."

[24] As he liked to say, “there is no unemployment on the land.”[25] Maurin lived in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he worked on the first Catholic Worker-owned farming commune, Maryfarm.

[27] Maurin traveled extensively, lecturing at parishes, colleges, and meetings across the country, often in coordination with the speaking tours of Dorothy Day.

He addressed venues as varied as Harvard students and small parishes, the Knights of Columbus and gatherings of bishops and priests.

[29] His condition deteriorated until he died at the Catholic Worker's Maryfarm near Newburgh, New York, on May 15, 1949, "the Feast of St. Dymphna, patroness of mental health, the anniversary also of St. John Baptiste de la Salle and of the Papal encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno.

Vincent McNabb and Eric Gill, Jacques Maritain, Leon Bloy, Charles Peguy of France, Don Sturzo of Italy, (Romano) Guardini of Germany, and (Nicholas) Berdyaev of Russia.