The founder of the Knights of Columbus was Blessed Father Michael J. McGivney, a Catholic priest who was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and whose cause is under consideration by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Father Michael J. McGivney was beatified on October 31, 2020. All Knights (and all Catholics) are encouraged to join the Father McGivney Guild and to help promote his cause for sainthood.
The son of Irish immigrant parents who came to America during the famine of the 1840s, he was born in Connecticut and grew up at a time when anti-Catholic prejudice greatly limited social and employment opportunities in the United States. From an early age, he knew he wanted to become a priest. He was ordained in 1878, and his first assignment was at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, CT.
It was at St. Mary’s in early 1882 that he gathered together a group of laymen from his parish and formed the Knights of Columbus. He had two goals for the new group: to provide assistance to widows and children when a family breadwinner died, and to provide Catholic men with a fraternal association that would draw them closer to their Catholic faith and to one another.
For the next several years, Father McGivney helped foster the growth of the Order, first in Connecticut and later in adjoining states. In 1884 he was named pastor of St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, CT. Never robust in health, Father McGivney was suddenly stricken with a serious case of pneumonia in January 1890. The young priest lost physical strength just as the Order he founded was moving toward new vitality, and died on August 14, two days past his 38th birthday. Father McGivney’s well-attended funeral was an indication of the love and respect the people felt for this hardworking, holy parish priest. It also reflected the deep personal appeal that immigrant Catholics immediately found in the Knights of Columbus.
Father McGivney was an idealist. He was a man whose youthful vision and creativity expanded and matured even as his physical well-being diminished. That vision continues today in the organization you are considering being a part of — the Knights of Columbus.