The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Founded Our Sunday Visitor; Fort Wayne's first native-son bishop
On the record
John Francis Noll was born in Fort Wayne on January 25, 1875, one of nineteen children, and was educated at the city's Cathedral school before seminary at Mount St. Mary's in Cincinnati; he was ordained on June 4, 1898. As pastor of St. Mary's in Huntington, Indiana, he founded the national Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor, whose first issue appeared on May 5, 1912, in a run of 35,000 copies; its circulation passed one million within about two years, making it one of the largest Catholic publications in the world. In 1925 he became the fifth bishop of Fort Wayne — the first native son of the city to hold the see — and in 1953 Pope Pius XII gave him the personal title of archbishop. His catechism Father Smith Instructs Jackson was a best-seller. He died on July 31, 1956. Published accounts disagree on what his first printing press cost, and the figure is omitted here.
Find them on this page
- § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement
Sources: Our Sunday Visitor (institutional history, oursundayvisitor.com); Today's Catholic (diocesan newspaper).