1. Stephen Badin spent most of his long career ministering to widely dispersed Catholics in Canada and in what became the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.
27 Facts About Stephen Badin
1. 2.
Stephen Badin was educated at the College de Montaigu in Paris and then began theological studies at the Sulpician seminary there.
3.
When his seminary was closed in 1791, Badin decided to leave France.
4.
Stephen Badin then studied English with the Jesuits at what was then Georgetown College in Maryland.
5.
Stephen Badin went on to White Sulfur Springs, Kentucky, where he established a mission named in honor of St Francis de Sales.
6.
Later in 1793, Stephen Badin was assigned as pastor at Holy Cross Church which had been founded the previous year, in Loretto, Kentucky.
7.
Stephen Badin traveled on foot, horseback, and boat between widely scattered Catholic settlements in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.
8.
Stephen Badin returned to France in 1819 for an unknown reason.
9.
Stephen Badin worked to secure gifts of money and church furniture to send to the Kentucky mission churches.
10.
In 1822, Stephen Badin published a "Statement of the Missions in Kentucky".
11.
Stephen Badin returned to the United States by 1825 when he recorded his baptisms, marriages, and burials on Drummond Island, Michilimackinac, and Sault Ste Marie, continuing his missionary work in the Michigan Territory through 1828.
12.
Stephen Badin reestablished the St Joseph Mission near present-day South Bend in the new state of Indiana.
13.
In 1830, Stephen Badin offered his services to Bishop Edward Fenwick of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which oversaw missionary work with the Potawatomi Indians in the western Great Lakes area.
14.
Fenwick asked Stephen Badin, who was in Detroit visiting his brother, to accept Pokagon's request.
15.
In 1832, Stephen Badin purchased 524 acres of land around South Bend, half from the government and half from two landowners.
16.
Stephen Badin then built a log chapel to serve as chapel and residence.
17.
Stephen Badin gave the land to the new Diocese of Vincennes in 1834 on the condition that it be used for a school and an orphanage.
18.
Stephen Badin organized the first orphanage in the state of Indiana in 1834, under the direction of Sister Lucina Whitaker and Sister Magadalen Jackson from Kentucky.
19.
From his South Bend outpost, Stephen Badin visited Fort Dearborn in Illinois in October 1830, and possibly several other times.
20.
In 1836, given his advanced age, Stephen Badin decided to leave his Indian mission to his successor, Father Louis Desaille.
21.
Stephen Badin was named vicar of the Diocese of Bardstown in 1837.
22.
Stephen Badin continued missionary work as well as defended Catholicism, particularly in a series of "Letters to an Episcopalian Friend" published in the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati in 1836.
23.
In September 1846, Stephen Badin accepted an offer by Bishop William Quarter of the new Diocese of Chicago to become pastor of the French settlement at Bourbonnais Grove, Illinois.
24.
Stephen Badin remained there for two years before taking one last missionary trip through the Kentucky diocese in 1848, which lasted about two years.
25.
Stephen Badin donated large tracts of land to the Diocese of Bardstown and its successor, the Diocese of Louisville, and wrote a poem in French about the Battle of Tippecanoe.
26.
Stephen Badin served at St Mary's Church in nearby Hamilton, Ohio.
27.
Stephen Badin died in Cincinnati on 21 April 1853 and was buried at the cathedral crypt in Cincinnati.