Stephen Badin

Reverend Fr. Stephen Theodore Badin (July 17, 1768 – April 21, 1853) was the first Catholic priest ordained in the United States. He 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.

Stephen Theodore Badin was born in Orléans, France, and educated at Montaigu College in Paris. He began theological studies at the Sulpician seminary there, and had been ordained a deacon, but was forced to flee in 1791 with other Sulpicians as the revolutionary government closed the seminary and further persecutions were expected. After sailing from Bordeaux to Philadelphia with Benedict Joseph Flaget and J.B. David (probably due to the good offices of Fenwick & Mason, the American consuls in Bordeaux), Badin completed his theological studies with the Sulpicians and was ordained a priest by Bishop John Carroll on May 25, 1793, in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied English with the Jesuits at what would later become Georgetown University, for much of his missionary work would be among the Maryland Catholics now settling across the Appalachian mountains, as well as with Catholics of French descent who had settled in the Great Lakes region.

Fathers Badin and Michel Barriere set out on foot for Kentucky on September 3, 1793, about a year after Flaget. They crossed the Appalachian mountains, then took a flatboat down the Ohio River to Maysville, Kentucky, from where they walked to Lexington. Badin went to White Sulfur Springs, Kentucky and established a mission named in honor of St. Francis de Sales. In April, 1794 Barriere left Bardstown, Kentucky for New Orleans but Fr. Badin established the home base for his missionary journeys on Pottinger's Creek, perhaps after consultation with Jean DuBois. For the next 14 years Fr. Badin travelled on foot, horseback and boat between widely scattered Catholic settlements in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory. One estimate puts his travels at over 100,000 miles. In 1806 he received permanent help with the arrival of Rev. Charles Nerinckx. To their relief, in 1808, Bardstown became a diocese in its own right, with Benedict Joseph Flaget as the first bishop, although he did not arrive at that post for another three years and the following year returned to Baltimore with Fr. Badin to discuss land title and other problems. J.B. David was ordained a bishop and named Flaget's co-adjutor in 1817, but he tried to refuse the difficult position.

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