1700 to 1808 Prior to the
American Revolution, present-day Kentucky was part of the British
Province of Virginia. To prevent hostility with Native American peoples in the region, the British did not allow European settlers to move west of the Appalachian Mountains. After the Revolution ended in 1781, settlers from the original 13 states, including Catholics, started flooding into the region. The Vatican in 1784 removed the new United States from the jurisdiction of the
Diocese of London, establishing the Prefecture Apostolic of United States of America, a jurisdiction in the United States. The first Catholic presence in Kentucky may have been a group of 25 families who traveled from
Maryland in 1785 to Goodwin's Station in present-day
Nelson County and founded
Holy Cross Church. This was the first church in the present-day archdiocese. Most of the early Catholic settlers in Kentucky were English-Catholics from Maryland. In 1793,
Stephen T. Badin estimated that 300 Catholic families were living in Kentucky, clustered in six settlements around Bardstown. These Catholics had left Maryland due to the religious persecution of Catholics there.
1808 to 1841 In 1808,
Pope Pius VII created four new dioceses out of the Diocese of Baltimore. One of these dioceses was the
Diocese of Bardstown. The pope chose Bardstown because it already had a significant Catholic population. The new diocese included all of Kentucky along with a vast area of the
American Midwest and South, from the
Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, out to the
Mississippi River. The pope appointed
Benedict Flaget as the first bishop of
Bardstown. Flaget resisted the appointment, but Pius VII insisted he take it. Needing to ordain more priests, Flaget in 1811 started
St. Thomas Seminary near Bardstown. It was the first Catholic seminary outside of the original 13 colonies. Over the coming years, the Vatican started reducing the size of the Diocese of Bardstown. It created the
Diocese of Cincinnati in 1821. That same year,
William Byrne founded St. Mary's College near
Lebanon. The first German Catholic church in Louisville,
St. Boniface, was founded in 1836; it is today the oldest continually operating parish in the city. Three years later, Gregory XVI erected the
Diocese of Nashville. With the creation of these new dioceses, the Diocese of Bardstown now included just Kentucky. To address the shortage of clergy in his diocese, Flaget in 1835 left for Europe, where he would spend the next four years recruiting seminarians to come to Kentucky. During his absence, Coadjutor Bishop
Guy Ignatius Chabrat administered the diocese. At this point, Flaget had founded four colleges, a large orphanage and infirmary for girls and eleven academies for girls. He had introduced three
congregations of religious sisters and four religious orders of men into the diocese. Flaget returned to Kentucky in 1839.
1841 to 1855 In 1841, recognizing the increased population and importance of Louisville, Gregory XVI suppressed the Diocese of Bardstown and erected the Diocese of Louisville in its place. He designated St. Louis Church in Louisville as its new cathedral. One of his first acts was to visit every parish, school and other Catholic institution in the diocese. He founded an
orphanage for boys in 1850. He continued the construction of the Cathedral of the Assumption, dedicating it in 1852. In 1853,
Pope Pius IX erected the
Diocese of Covington, taking Eastern Kentucky from the Diocese of Louisville. Between 22 and 100 Catholics were killed before the Bloody Monday riot was suppressed. Following the riot, Spalding wrote, "I entreat all to pause and reflect, to commit no violence, to believe no idle rumors, and to cultivate that peace and love which are characteristics of the religion of Christ." In 1861, after the start of the
American Civil War, Spalding closed St. Joseph's College and converted its facilities into a military hospital for soldiers. During his two-year tenure, Lavialle conducted diocesan visitations, invited the
Dominican Fathers to the diocese and erected four churches in Louisville. Lavialle died in 1867.
1868 to 1937 William McCloskey, rector of the
Pontifical North American College in Rome, was appointed bishop of
Louisville in 1868 by Pius IX. When McCloskey took office, the diocese had 64 churches. He introduced the
Passionists, the Benedictines, the
Fathers of the Resurrection, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the
Franciscan Sisters, and the Brothers of Mary into the diocese to run schools and staff institutions. In 1869, McCloskey brought the
Sisters of Mercy to Louisville to operate the
U.S. Marine Hospital. That same year, he established Preston Park Seminary in Louisville. When McCloskey died in 1909, the diocese had 165 churches. After McCloskey died in 1909, Auxiliary Bishop
Denis O'Donaghue from the
Diocese of Indianapolis was the next bishop. During the
1918 influenza pandemic, O'Donaghue closed the diocese's churches. He stated "the civil laws of the community always take precedence over the laws of the church." For his efforts and those of the religious sisters and
Knights of Columbus in Louisville during the pandemic, General
Fred Thaddeus Austin of
Camp Zachary Taylor wrote him a public letter of gratitude. The Sisters of Charity opened Nazareth College in Louisville in 1920, the first four-year Catholic college in the archdiocese for women. It is today
Spalding University. During his tenure as bishop and archbishop, Floersh increased the number of parishes and schools in the archdiocese. He established
Bellarmine College in 1950 in Louisville; it is today Bellarmine University. Floresch also established the local
Catholic Charities agency, the annual
Corpus Christi processions, and St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville in 1952. A self-described "Vatican II bishop", McDonough implemented the
Second Vatican Council's reforms in the archdiocese. His tenure saw advances in
liturgical renewal,
ecumenism, and
lay involvement. In 1970, Paul VI erected the
Diocese of Memphis, making it another suffragan of the Archdiocese of Louisville. Kelly led the restoration of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, pushed for
interfaith dialogue, and worked for increased lay person leadership in the archdiocese. He started a Campaign for Excellence program that reversed the enrollment decline at Catholic schools in the archdiocese. Kelly admitted to developing an
opioid addiction while recovering from surgery for
lung cancer, only recognizing the problem after being confronted by his doctors. In 1988,
Pope John Paul II erected the
Dioceses of Lexington and
Knoxville, designating both new dioceses as suffragan dioceses of the Archdiocese of Louisville. In July 2019, Kurtz underwent treatment for
urothelial cancer, which required a three-month medical leave of absence from the archdiocese. Kurtz retired in 2022. Bishop
Shelton Fabre from the
Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux was named by Pope Francis in 2022 as archbishop of Louisville. In April 2025, the Catholic Education Foundation announced a $100 million capital campaign in the archdiocese to assist families in paying tuition at Catholic schools. At the time of the announcement, the foundation had received $80 million in pledges.
Sexual abuse In the wake of the uncovering of widespread sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2002, it was revealed that Bishop Kelly played a part in reassigning priests he knew or suspected had abused children and reaching confidential settlements with victims. Kelly resisted calls for him to resign. In March 2003, Louis E. Miller pleaded guilty to 44 counts of indecent and immoral practices and six counts of sexual abuse, involving 21 victims. Miller was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died in 2017. In June 2003, the archdiocese paid $25.7 million to settle claims of sexual abuse by clergy from the 1940s to 1997. Steve Pohl, pastor of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Community in Louisville, was arrested in
Indian Rocks Beach, Florida in August 2015 and charged with possession of
child pornography. He pleaded guilty in January 2016 and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. Joseph Hemmerle was convicted in 2016 of inappropriately touching a ten-year-old boy in 1973 while serving as director at Camp Tall Trees in
Brandenburg. Hemmerle received a seven-year prison sentence. In 2017, Hemmerle pleaded guilty to molesting another boy at the camp in 1977 and 1978; he received a two-year sentence. The archdiocese in 2019 released
Restoring Trust: Report on Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Louisville. It was the result of an independent investigation by Mark Miller, a former commissioner of the
Kentucky State Police, of allegations of sexual abuse from 1922 to 2019. He found significant failures in the past of reporting sexual abuse allegations to authorities. The last credible accusation of sexual abuse of a minor dated back to the 1980s. He was sentenced in March 2025 to 19 years in federal prison. ==Bishops==