Fr. Michael J. Mcgivney

In the quiet, unassuming curate of St. Mary’s Parish in New Haven, Connecticut, a small group of men established the Knights of Columbus in a church basement early in the spring of 1882.  The priest, Father Michael J. McGivney, saw clearly that both Catholics and the Church faced serious problems in the last half of the nineteenth century.  Anti-Catholicism, ethnic prejudice, under-employment, lack of social standing, and often the early loss of the family breadwinner.

To resolve those problems Father McGivney conceived the idea of an organization of Catholic men who would band together:

     To aid one another in times of sickness or death, by means of a simple insurance plan, so that their wives and children would not face abject poverty.  To strengthen families and family life.  To strengthen themselves, and each other in Faith.  To be a strong pillar of support for their priests and bishops. To be of service to Church and community by coming to the aid of those most in need of society.

     They called themselves Knights of Columbus – Knights to emphasize chivalry’s ideals of charity and support for Church and state, and Columbus as a reminder that Catholics had been the backbone and bulwark of America’s growth and  greatness from the  very beginning.

      The State of Connecticut officially chartered the Order on March 29th 1882.  It’s founder, Father McGivney, and those first Knights dreamed of the day when there would be a council in every parish in Connecticut.  Little could they know that their small group would grow into a global organization of more than 1.6 million members with nearly 12,000 local councils in 13 countries: the United States, 
Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Cuba, Virgin Islands, Guam and Spain.

     In the years since 1882 the Knights of Columbus has become one of the largest and strongest life insurance companies in North America with more than $43 billion of insurance in force.  More than $4 billion in new insurance is sold annually and last year the Order paid $124 million in death benefits to families and deceased members and $275 million in dividends to insurance members.