American Catholic History

Shrines dedicated in honor of St. Anne are among the oldest Catholic establishments in the U.S. St Anne de Detroit, for instance, is the second-oldest parish in the United States, while the shrine on Isle la Motte, Vermont, was part of a French fort protecting the southern approaches to Montreal. Some shrines have dramatic stories, like the National Shrine of St. Anne in Scranton, Pennsylvania which nearly collapsed due to mining a...

Stanley Rother was born in Okarchee, Oklahoma the oldest of four children to a family of Catholic German farmers. He grew up learning the ways of farming, playing sports, and serving Mass. He entered seminary but struggled with some theology classes and Latin. The seminary eventually sent him home saying he wasn't priest material. Fortunately his bishop and Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland wanted to give him anothe...

Cora Evans grew up a good Mormon, but had a crisis of faith during her wedding at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. She and her husband left the Mormon faith, and eventually became Catholic. This led to hardships as they were shunned for their apostasy. They had to flee Utah for California where they lived the rest of their lives. Cora's conversion came about in part because she had been having visions of the Blessed Mother sinc...

Franciscan Fr. Juan de Padilla accompanied Coronado on his 1541 mission into New Mexico to search for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. Father Padilla was looking for souls to evangelize and save. After Coronado’s search was frustrated, Fr. de Padilla remained behind to evangelize natives among the Ouichita — or Wichita — in modern day Kansas. Details aren't clear as to how or precisely where, but for his efforts he was the first...

Orestes Brownson was the first major American Catholic intellectual to gain an international reputation. His thinking on the significance of America, and the place of Catholics within American political life was new and unexpected. He believed, contra what many anti-Catholics in his day believed, that not only could Catholics be good Americans, but that Catholics could be the best Americans. He also had strong opinions on slavery. ...

Orestes Brownson was a major intellectual of the 19th century, and a Catholic convert in his 41st year. Born in 1803 in Vermont, he was raised Christian, but in no particular Christian denomination or sect. He was largely self-taught, and had a strong sense that one must follow reason to arrive at truth, no matter where it was found. In his teens he began a struggle for religious truth that would start in Presbyterianism, then thro...

John Wayne, the icon of American manliness and one of the most important film stars of all time, once called himself a "cardiac Catholic." He meant that he intended to become Catholic on his deathbed. Born Marion Morrison he was raised a Presbyterian, but all three of his wives were Catholic. We're not sure how that worked out, since none of them predeceased him, but we leave that to God's grace and the wisdom of the Church. Howeve...

Since shortly after he died in 1799, questions have circulated about whether George Washington converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The evidence isn't conclusive in either direction, but a number of factors point to this possibility. Chief among them is that Washington requested that a Catholic priest come to his bedside as he lay dying. One of the Neale brothers who was a Jesuit priest in Piscataway, Maryland, right across th...

Julia Greeley was born a slave in Missouri. After Missouri abolished slavery she moved to Denver, Colorado where she worked for the family of the first governor of Colorado. She became Catholic in 1880 and developed a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She devoted her life to helping anyone who needed assistance. She would give to others from her own meager earnings, any anything she couldn't afford she would beg for. She ...

Mother Mary Magdalene Bentivoglio was born Anna Bentivoglio into Italian and French nobility in the mid 1800s. But both of her parents died before her 27th birthday. Since she and two of her sisters were still single, Pope Pius IX took responsibility for them and they were placed in a Benedictine abbey. This experienced compelled all three to desire religious life, but a more austere experience of it. So they became Poor Clares of ...

St. Kateri Tekakwitha lived a life marked by tragedy and upheaval, but also a lot of grace and love. She was born to Mohawk Indian parents (though her mother was originally Algonquin), who both died from smallpox when she was four. She survived smallpox, but the disease left her face scarred and her eyesight damaged. Because of this handicap she was called, "She who bumps into things," or in Mohawk, "Tekakwitha." At a young age she...

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the wealthiest man in the American colonies at the time of the Revolution. He was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, and after a long and distinguished career in public service, he was the last of the signers to die. Despite laws outlawing Catholics from holding public office in the Maryland colony he was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress. He later served as ...

Father Leo Heinrichs was a Franciscan who fled persecution in Germany only to be shot dead by an Italian anarchist in Denver in 1908. He first came to New York and New Jersey where he ministered for 16 years. He was much loved by the homeless and those in need, as he did great work providing for their needs, and giving them spiritual comfort. But in 1907 he was transferred to St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Denver, the parish establish...

In 1810 a wooden cross was miraculously discovered in the hillside of the village of Chimayo in northern New Mexico. The area had been known by Pueblo Indians as a place where miraculous healings took place, and after the cross was found a chapel was built because pilgrims started coming to pray before the miraculous cross and seek healing from the "holy dirt." So many miraculous healings have been attributed to this location, and ...

Roger Maris was a lifelong Catholic. He was born in Minnesota and grew up in North Dakota. He was an excellent athlete, and after breaking into the majors with the Cleveland Indians in 1957, he eventually made it to the New York Yankees, where he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961. Ruth’s record was one of the most hallowed in baseball, so anyone breaking it was a big deal. But Yankee fans wanted it to be the f...

King Charles I of England established the colony of Maryland in 1634 as a haven for Catholics. The colony was created at the request of, George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore. But he died before his dream could be realized. So his son Cecil Calvert, the second Baron Baltimore, took on the task of settling the colony. He sent his brother, Leonard, over as governor. Four years after the colony was established, three member of the...

In the 1870s the Sisters of Loretto built a chapel for the school they ran in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the architect failed to include a staircase to the choir loft 20 feet above the floor. And then he died before he could rectify the situation. The sisters prayed a novena to St. Joseph to find a solution, and on the ninth day of the novena a mysterious carpenter showed up and offered to build them the perfect staircase for free. ...

Joseph Dutton, born Ira Dutton in 1843, was a good kid, born to protestant parents. He fought in the Civil War as a quartermaster, advancing from sergeant to captain because of his efficiency and ability. The decade after the Civil War he later called his "wild years" due to a bad marriage and a life of dissipation, under the influence of "John Barleycorn." In the late 1870s he changed his ways and became Catholic as he sought a wa...