Stephen Badin
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Reverend Fr. Stephen Theodore Badin (July 17, 1768 - April 21, 1853) was ordained a priest by Bishop John Carroll, 25 May, 1793. The significance is that his was the first Roman Catholic priest ordination in the United States.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Orléans, France, he completed his theological studies and after ordination continued to learn the English language until he was appointed to the Mission of Kentucky.
[edit] Missionary
His mission began in the fall of 1793. He travelled by flatboat down the Ohio River to Maysville, then overland to Lexington, Kentucky. By April, 1794 he removed to Bardstown, Kentucky, as his home location for his mission to Kentucky. His mission was accomplished on horseback travelling between the Kentucky Catholic settlements for the next 14 years alone in his work. One estimate puts his travels at over 100,000 miles in the saddle in his mission. In 1806 he received permanent help with the arrival of Rev. Charles Nerinckx.
After a time he returned to France in 1820 to accept the pastorship of a parish near Orléans, the city of his birth. He worked constantly to secure gifts of money and church furniture to send to the Kentucky mission churches.
He returned to America in 1828, first on a mission to Michigan, then returning to Kentucky in 1829. In 1830 he offered his services to Bishop Edward Fenwick of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and continued missionary work with the Pottawattamie Indians at St. Joseph's River. He continued in this mission until 1836.
He returned to Bardstown, Kentucky in 1837 and resumed missionary work. In September 1846 he accepted the pastorship of the French settlement at Bourbonnais Grove, Kankakee County, Illinois for two years.
His final mission work to Kentucky came in 1848 and lasted about two years.
[edit] Later years and death
About 1850 he accepted residence at the cathedral while Bishop John Baptist Purcell was Archbishop of Cincinnati where he spent his final years until his death in 1853.
He was buried at the cathedral crypt until in 1904 the Archbishop of Cincinnati William Henry Elder permitted the removal of his body and reinterrment at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
[edit] Legacy
A Catholic High School, Father Stephen T. Badin High School, located in the city of Hamilton, Ohio (Butler County, Ohio) was named in his honor.
