Our Sunday Visitor

Our Sunday Visitor is a Roman Catholic publishing company in Huntington, Indiana, which prints the American national weekly newspaper of that name, as well as numerous Catholic periodicals, religious books, pamphlets, catechetical materials, inserts for parish bulletins and offertory envelopes, Online Giving system and Faith in Action Websites for parishes. Founded in 1912 by Father John F. Noll, the newspaper Our Sunday Visitor  was the most popular Catholic newsweekly of the twentieth century.

Father John Francis Noll, later bishop of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was a small town priest who, having grown weary of anti-Catholic literature, and especially a widely circulated anti-Catholic paper called The Menace, decided to print a parish bulletin. The first issue of Our Sunday Visitor, numbering 35,000 copies, was dated May 5, 1912. A year later, the circulation of the paper had reached 160,000 copies, far beyond Father Noll's parish. Shortly after World War I, the circulation had grown to 500,000 copies.

The initial focus of Our Sunday Visitor  was to combat anti-Catholicism, help Catholics preserve their identity, teach Catholics about their faith, and combat social injustice. A column Father Noll started in 1912, called "Father Smith Instructs Jackson", was later collected into a popular book which sold millions of copies and is still in print.

On March 30, 1913, the paper offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who could prove the anti-Catholic charges laid against the Church. No one ever claimed the reward.

In the 1930s, Our Sunday Visitor  focused on how Catholics could preserve their faith in a secular society. During the 1940s, Bishop Noll's newspaper took positions against birth control, divorce, and indecent literature and movies.

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