[12][13][14] It is believed that the first French Jesuit missionaries came to the area that included the site of present-day Vincennes, Indiana, in the late 17th century, around 1675.
Father Sebastian Louis Meurin, St. Francis Xavier's first resident priest, arrived in May 1748, but the earliest records of the Catholic Church in Vincennes, Indiana date to 21 April 1749.
The Diocese of Quebec served Catholic parishes across North America, but it lacked money and sufficient priests.
Before he was recalled to Baltimore in 1795, Father Flaget opened a school and held classes at St. Francis Xavier church.
Father Rivet, who received a $200 annual salary from the U.S. Congress, became the first public school teacher in the Northwest Territory.
[24] In 1808 Pope Pius VII divided the Catholic churches in the United States and its territories into five dioceses.
[26] On 6 May 1834 Pope Gregory XVI issued a Papal Bull, Benedictus Deus,[27] which confirmed the recommendations of the Second Provincial Council of Baltimore held in 1833.
The bull erected the Diocese of Vincennes, the first episcopal see in Indiana,[12][28] along with making other diocesan boundary changes.
[30] Bishop Bruté made a point to visit each Catholic family in his diocese, regardless of the distance from his rectory at Vincennes.
He also founded a college at Vincennes in 1837, and connected it to a theological seminary for men to train for the priesthood which had been established under the Congregation of Jesus or "Eudists".
In 1839 they purchased a building on the site of the first Vincennes University, which failed, and named the new school St. Gabriel's College.
[35] The new bishop remained in France for several months to raise funds and make arrangements for improvements to the diocese.
Among his most significant achievements were completing St. Francis Xavier Cathedral at Vincennes, and construction of a library to house Bishop Bruté's collection of more than 5,000 books and religious documents.
[39] Despite Bishop de Hailandière' efforts in Indiana, its population grew slowly and the institutions that he helped to establish suffered many problems.
Within a few months of his consecration, Bishop Bazin appointed Jacques Maurice de St. Palais, his vicar general, as administrator to the diocese.
[45] During his tenure as bishop, he had to contend with unresolved monetary issues from Hailandière's episcopacy, a cholera epidemic, the American Civil War, and expanding the educational and ministerial opportunities within the diocese.
In 1849 Mother Theodore Guerin established St. Ann's orphanage in Vincennes, and in 1853 monks from Einsiedeln, Switzerland, founded St. Meinrad abbey and seminary in southern Indiana, but plans to open a school for African-Americans was never carried out.
[48] After the war Bishop St. Palais recognized that Indianapolis had become a quickly-growing city, the eighth largest in the United States as of 1870, but deferred the decision to move the seat of the diocese to his successor.