Background
Michael Joseph McGivney was born on August 12, 1852 and was the eldest of the thirteen children born to Patrick and Mary (Lynch) McGivney.
Michael Joseph McGivney was born on August 12, 1852 and was the eldest of the thirteen children born to Patrick and Mary (Lynch) McGivney.
On completion of his elementary education in the parochial and public schools of his native town, Waterbury, Connecticut, he worked in the spoon factory of Holmes, Booth & Haydens. On discerning a religious vocation in their son, his parents, though recent immigrants from Ireland, managed to send him to the college of St. Hyacinth in Canada, a preparatory institution, and then to Niagara University at Niagara Falls, where he was graduated in 1873. That autumn, he enrolled as a theological student in St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, where on December 22, 1877, he was ordained by Archbishop Gibbons.
In 1877 he was assigned by Bishop Thomas Galberry as an assistant to Father P. A. Murphy of St. Mary's Church, New Haven, Connecticut An energetic, zealous priest, he organized a parochial total-abstinence society and unstintingly gave his time to sodalities and to a social organization known as the Red Knights, which, after the Civil War, had grown out of the Sarsfield Guard, an Irish military unit. Since the Red Knights died a natural death and Catholics were not permitted to join the various attractive secret societies, Father McGivney grew interested in the establishment of an acceptable Catholic fraternal order which would bring men together in mutually helpful association. As a result of a series of meetings at the parochial house commencing January 16, 1882, he and nine lay associates established the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal insurance society of a semisecret character, which was chartered by the State of Connecticut March 29, 1882. McGivney assisted in composing the ritual, and as an advocate of total abstinence insisted that members of the order must be recognized practical Catholics who were in no way directly connected with the liquor traffic. Through his good offices the order was approved by Bishop Lawrence S. McMahon of Hartford, and soon spread its local councils throughout the diocese, though its extension beyond the state of Connecticut, in the face of clerical suspicion, was slow until it was approved by the papal delegate. As national chaplain and a member of the supreme council, McGivney remained the inspiring force in the society until his death in Thomaston, Connecticut, where for six years he had been pastor of St. Thomas' Church. His inspiration was continued through two brothers, Monsignor P. J. and Father John J. McGivney, who in turn succeeded him in the national chaplaincy of the order, which at its high tide during the World War approached a million members.
McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus at a local parish to serve as a mutual aid and fraternal insurance organization, particularly for immigrants and their families. It developed through the 20th century as the world's largest Catholic fraternal organization. 1989, the York Catholic District School Board in Ontario, Canada founded a school named Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in his honor. It is located in Markham and currently has 1, 400 students. Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster's biography of Fr. McGivney, Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism, was published by William Morrow and Company in 2006. The Catholic University of America renamed a prominent building on their campus as McGivney Hall. Fr. Michael J. McGivney monument in Sts. Peter & Paul Parish Church, Bauang, La Union, Philippines. A stained-glass window depicting Father McGivney was dedicated Sept. 12, 2009, at St. John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut, by Bishop William E. Lori, of Bridgeport. The window was created by Rohl’s Stained and Leaded Glass Studio of New Rochelle, New York. Father McGivney Catholic High School in Glen Carbon, Illinois.
