Episode 98

Father Stephen Badin was the first priest ordained in the United States. Born in France, he was a deacon completing his seminary studies when the French Revolution compelled him to flee France. He arrived in the United States in 1792 and was ordained by Baltimore’s first bishop, John Carroll, in 1793. While he would have preferred to stay in Baltimore, Carroll sent him to be a missionary priest in the Kentucky wilderness where a concentration of Catholic families had moved recently and who needed a priest. He worked as a missionary all over Kentucky and the midwest for most of the rest of his life. He was a cantankerous, rigorous man who nonetheless had a tender concern for the souls of his flock. He built many churches, acquired much land, helped to establish religious communities, welcomed the Dominicans, and made the way ready for Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget when Bardstown, Kentucky was made a diocese in 1808. Eventually his gruff style and strong opinions about how things should be run put him at odds with Bishop Flaget and he moved to Cincinnati, where he lived out his days. Along the way, however, one of the plots of land he purchased in north-central Indiana made its way into the hands of Fr. Edward Sorin, who was looking for a place to establish a college. That college is the University of Notre Dame, and Father Badin is buried in a replica of the cabin he had built near one of the two lakes on that land.

Books

• The Diocese of Bardstown 1808-2008 Bicentennial Celebration
• Stephen T. Badin: Priest in the Wilderness
• The American Catholic Almanac

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