Our Founder

‘An Outstanding Witness’

When 29-year-old Father Michael McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882, he knew what hardships and pressures these husbands and fathers — mostly poor, immigrant Catholics — faced:

• A culture with deep mistrust of the Catholic community.

• Often dangerous working conditions.

• Membership organizations that promised social benefits and mutual aid but came with strong anti-Catholic biases.

• The burden of knowing that their death would likely leave their families penniless and at risk of being separated.

A child of immigrants, and a faithful son who had to leave seminary to help support his mother and siblings after his factory-employed father died, Father McGivney was intimately familiar with these realities.

And so, as an assistant priest at St. Mary’s Church in the bustling port city of New Haven, Connecticut, he stepped into the breach to do something about it. Gathering men in his parish basement, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus.

At the time, Christopher Columbus was widely lionized in American culture, despite being a Catholic, and Father McGivney proposed him as a model for these first Knights who sought to hold on to their Catholic faith and identity in the New World.

After founding the Knights, Father McGivney was notably intentional about placing leadership in the hands of the group’s lay members. In this way, he anticipated by nearly a century Vatican II’s focus on and empowerment of the laity in living out the universal call to holiness and the Church’s mission to evangelize.

During the global flu pandemic of 1899-1890, Father McGivney was ministering among his people until his own weakening health confined him to bed, where he continued praying for his flock. He died on Aug. 14, 1890, two days after his 38th birthday.

In 2020, the Knights of Columbus announced the Vatican had approved a miracle involving the child of one of the Order’s insurance agents, moving Father McGivney’s cause for canonization to the stage of beatification.

In his Apostolic Letter announcing Father McGivney’s beatification, Pope Francis stated that our Founder’s “zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel and generous concern for the needs of his brothers and sisters made him an outstanding witness of Christian solidarity and fraternal assistance.”

Blessed Michael McGivney is entombed at St. Mary’s Church, birthplace of the Knights of Columbus and a pilgrimage destination for Knights, their families and all others who have a devotion to America’s Parish Priest.