NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
When Stephen Badin entered seminary in his native France, he didn’t know that revolution soon would come to his country and, along with it, a hatred for the Catholic Church. Nor did he know that in 1791, while still a seminarian, he would flee to America with two companions—-the Fathers (and future bishops) Joseph Flaget and J. B. David. And he most certainly didn’t know that on May 25, 1793, he would receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders from Bishop John Carroll, becoming the first priest ordained in the United States.
If he had known, perhaps he would have followed a different path. But most likely not. For in the decades that followed, America’s proto-priest served his adopted homeland faithfully and well.
First, Father Badin served it from a base in Kentucky, riding more than 100,000 miles in the 26 years he ministered to Catholics in the Northwest Territory. Then, for a short while, he served the Church in America from France, where he raised money for the American missions. Finally, he served it as vicar-general for the Diocese of Cincinnati. There, he grew old on horseback, regularly traveling as far north as Chicago to minister to Native Americans and European immigrants.
On one of those trips, Badin spotted 524 acres of land that he thought well suited for a mission. He paid $655 for the land and built a small log chapel there, by the lake he named “St. Mary’s.”
A few years later, when the Diocese of Vincennes was created, he sold it to the new bishop for $1. The bishop in turn sold it to the Holy Cross Fathers. There, they founded the University of Notre Dame.
Badin hung up his saddle in 1850, at age 82, and retired to the bishop’s residence in Cincinnati. He died three years later. His remains, however, found their final resting place by St. Mary’s Lake in a replica of the chapel Badin built there long ago.
