Welcome to the Indiana Catholic website! This site is intended to teach, to share, and to advance the memory of those men and women who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith in Indiana. In particular, I want to share the early history of the clergy in Indiana, especially the 18th, 19th and even the early 20th century.
Names such as Simon Brute;, Anthony Deydier, Benjamin Petit, Simon Lalumiere, St. Mother Theodore Guerin, Mother Theresa Hackelmeier and many others who helped to maintain and spread the faith and bring the sacraments and all the exterior trappings of Roman Catholicism to the backwoods of Indiana in the earliest days of the Diocese of Vincennes which later became the Diocese (and Archdiocese) of Indianapolis.
Please look around, click on the links, let us know what you think. There are links to original documents as well. There are bibliographies, indexes, and more in-depth information about particular people, places and things.
Copyright © 2006-2025. Updated – Maarch 14, 2025
This website is lovingly dedicated to the memory of
Msgr. John J. Doyle
Sister Ann Kathleen Brawley SP
Fr. Thomas C. Widner S.J.
Msgr Doyle wrote “The Catholic Church in Indiana 1686-1814” in 1976. He died in 1985. This web site is dedicated to his memory. In the foreword to his book, he said:
“It is my hope that the reading of the story told here may awaken the desire, latent in almost every heart, to understand what we are by discovering how we came to be, and to stir up the ambition to preserve for those that come after us the memory of the works worthy of emulation that God performed by the hands of those that went before us, while we strive to deserve our heritage”
