He spent most of his long career ministering to widely dispersed Catholics in Canada and in what became the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.

He was educated at the Collège de Montaigu in Paris and then began theological studies at the Sulpician seminary there.

Badin completed his theological studies with the Sulpicians in that city and was ordained a priest by Bishop John Carroll on 25 May 1793.

Badin went on to White Sulfur Springs, Kentucky,[3] where he established a mission named in honor of St. Francis de Sales.

[4] Later in 1793, Badin was assigned as pastor at Holy Cross Parish, which had been founded the previous year, in Loretto, Kentucky.

[5] In April 1794, Badin established the home base for his missionary journeys on Pottinger's Creek, Kentucky, perhaps after consultation with Reverend Jean DuBois.

Badin traveled on foot, horseback, and boat between widely scattered Catholic settlements in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.

[6] Badin returned to the United States by 1825 when he recorded his baptisms, marriages, and burials on Drummond Island, Michilimackinac, and Sault Ste Marie, continuing his missionary work in the Michigan Territory through 1828.

In 1830, Badin offered his services to Bishop Edward Fenwick of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which oversaw missionary work with the Potawatomi Indians in the western Great Lakes area.

Potawatomi Chief Leopold Pokagon, who had converted to Catholicism, traveled to Detroit in 1830 to ask for a priest to be sent to his tribe.

In 1836, given his advanced age, Badin decided to leave his Indian mission to his successor, Father Louis Desaille.

He continued missionary work as well as defended Catholicism, particularly in a series of "Letters to an Episcopalian Friend" published in the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati in 1836.

In September 1846, Badin accepted an offer by Bishop William Quarter of the new Diocese of Chicago to become pastor of the French settlement at Bourbonnais Grove, Illinois.