Michael McGivney

Apostle of the Catholic Family

Michael Joseph McGivney was born on August 12, 1852, in Waterbury, Connecticut, the eldest of thirteen children in an Irish immigrant family. His father worked in a brass mill. When his father died unexpectedly, the sixteen-year-old Michael left seminary to work in a spoon factory to support his mother and siblings. Despite the hardship, his vocation endured. He returned to his studies and was ordained a priest on December 22, 1877, in Baltimore. He was assigned to St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut, where he threw himself into parish life with extraordinary energy.

Father McGivney witnessed firsthand the struggles of Catholic immigrant families. When a breadwinner died, entire families were plunged into poverty. Anti-Catholic prejudice barred many from fraternal organizations that offered mutual aid. On March 29, 1882, he gathered a group of parishioners and founded the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal benefit society rooted in charity, unity, and patriotism. He named the order after Christopher Columbus to demonstrate that Catholics were loyal, patriotic Americans. The Knights provided life insurance, financial support for widows and orphans, and a brotherhood that strengthened men in their faith.

Father McGivney died of pneumonia on August 14, 1890, in Thomaston, Connecticut, at the age of just thirty-eight, during a devastating epidemic. He did not live to see the full fruit of his labor. Today, the Knights of Columbus has more than two million members worldwide and is the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world. His cause for canonization was opened in 1997. He was declared Venerable in 2008 and beatified on October 31, 2020, by Pope Francis, after a miracle was attributed to his intercession: the healing of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening condition in utero.

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