American Saints
This November, LA Catholics invite you to journey with us through the lives of Americans who are on the path to sainthood.
Blessed Father Michael McGivney
Born: August 12, 1852
Death: August 14, 1890
Cause for Canonization Opened:
Declared Blessed: October 31, 2020
Blessed Father Michael McGivney, born the oldest child of Irish immigrants in Connecticut in 1857, was raised Catholic and lived his faith despite experiencing anti-Catholic bigotry and poverty from a young age. At age 13, he began working at a brass factory to help his family. At age 16, he attended the College of St. Hyacinthe in Quebec, Canada to prepare for seminary. He then went on to attend Our Lady of the Angels Seminary (now Niagara University) and St. Mary’s Seminary, where he was sacristan, remembered for his holiness and love of baseball. Ordained on December 22, 1877 in America’s First Cathedral in Baltimore, and was assigned the parish of St. Mary’s in New Haven. McGivney was called “ A Man of the People,” accompanying Catholics and non-Catholics alike, most notably a death row prisoner, James “Chip” Smith. Seeking to foster the layman’s unique vocation and build a community of faithful men that uplifted and cared for each other and their families, Fr. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization for Catholic men, in 1882. In 1884, he was named pastor of St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, where he built strong ties with parishioners before falling ill with tuberculosis and pneumonia in 1890. Fr. Michael McGivney passed at age 38, in the rectory of St. Thomas.
Read his story of building fraternity among the Catholic lay men, evangelization and charity towards Catholics and non-Catholics here.
Resources:
Quote: “Father McGivney met these injustices by living the Gospel. Love was not an abstraction or a “cause” for him. The widow and the orphan, the father with no job; the prisoner on death row. Blessed Michael McGivney knew their faces and knew their names.”
— Archbishop Gomez on Fr. Michael McGivney
