From the desk of the pastor for Feb. 22, 2026

The Lord be with you. Last time we left off with the Catholic Church becoming the largest single denomination in the United States on the eve of the American Civil War. In those early decades of the nineteenth century, the Faith came to Ohio.

The first Catholics in Ohio settled near Somerset, Ohio, in Perry County. On December 6, 1818 they erected the first Catholic church in the state, which they dedicated to St. Joseph. The third church of that parish still stands on the same spot where that original church was built.

Enough Catholics had moved to Ohio for the Diocese of Cincinnati to be established on June 19, 1821. Father Edward Fenwick, who had been the pastor of the above-mentioned St. Joseph’s, became the first bishop of Ohio that year… as the whole state was covered by that single diocese. Over the next few decades the cities of Cincinnati and Cleveland experienced significant growth with more and more Catholic immigrants from Germany and France arriving.

In 1847 Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Cleveland splitting Ohio into two. Originally, this division cut through entire counties such that bishops of Cleveland and Cincinnati had to trade counties till the division followed county lines. The first church in Cleveland had been St. Mary’s of the Flats, which had been built in 1840. To lead this new flock, Pope Pius IX chose a French-born priest named Louis Amadeus Rappe. Rappe had been ordained in 1829 and came to America in 1840 at the invitation of Archbishop Purcell. He had served as the first resident pastor in Toledo before being tapped for Cleveland.

Bishop Rappe moved with remarkable energy. Within a year of taking office, he had laid the cornerstone of a proper cathedral — St. John the Evangelist — at the corner of Superior Avenue and Erie Street (now East 9th Street). He also converted a frame building on East 6th Street into Cleveland's first diocesan seminary, which would later grow into St. Mary Seminary. By the end of 1848, the first priests for the new diocese had been ordained there.

Recognizing that a young diocese needed more clergy than American soil could yet produce, Rappe made a voyage to Europe in 1849 to recruit. He returned in 1850 with four priests, five seminarians, two Sisters of Charity, and six Ursuline nuns — a small but vital influx of talent and dedication. St. John's Cathedral was consecrated on November 7, 1852. This imposing Gothic brick structure signaled to the city that Catholicism had truly arrived. By then, Rappe had also established the city's first parochial school and was laying the groundwork for what would become a remarkable network of Catholic institutions. By the time his episcopacy ended in 1870, he had founded almost twenty parishes in Cleveland and set the diocese up for continued growth.

Our Faith started as one small church outside of one small town. Grace begins in each of us as one small invitation. May we remember the great things that God can do for us when we say “yes” to His Will.

In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John