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Michael J. Mcgivney




Father Michael J. McGivney ( August 12 , 1852 - August 14 , 1890 ) was a Roman Catholic Priest and founder of the Knights Of Columbus .

Father McGivney entered St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland in 1873 , he had to leave the seminary and return home to help finish raising his siblings due to the death of his father. He later returned to the seminary and was ordained a priest on December 22 , 1877 by Archbishop James Gibbons . On February 2 , 1882 , while an assistant Pastor at Saint Mary's Church in New Haven, Connecticut , McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus with a small group of parishioners. McGivney died from tuberculosis on the eve of the Assumption in 1890, when he was only thirty-eight years old.

The order now has over 1.7 million member families and thirteen thousand councils. During the 2004-2005 fraternal year, $134 million dollars and 68 million manhours were donated to charity by the order.

In 1996 , the Roman Catholic Archdiocese Of Hartford opened an investigation into Father McGivney's life, with a stated goal of his Beatification and Canonization , or membership in the sainthood. The diocesan investigation was closed in 2000 , and the case was passed to the Congregation For The Causes Of Saints in the Holy See .

A biography by in 2006 .

In honor of him, the York Catholic District School Board in Ontario , Canada founded a school named Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in 1989 . It is located in Markham and currently houses 1400 students.


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FURTHER READING

  • Douglas Brinkley and Julie Fenster; ''Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism''; William Morrow Publishers; 2006.