June 24, 2025 // Bishop

Bishop John Francis Noll: Renowned Teacher and Defender of the Faith

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades

One hundred years ago, on June 30, 1925, Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago ordained Father John Francis Noll a bishop and installed him as the fifth bishop of Fort Wayne at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which was Father Noll’s home parish, in Fort Wayne.

Appointed bishop by Pope Pius XI, Father Noll was already nationally renowned and known in Rome for his writing and publishing, instructing Catholics throughout the country about the teachings of the Church and defending the faith against the anti-Catholic bigotry and deceitful accusations, which were quite rampant at the time. Through Our Sunday Visitor, which he founded in 1912, Father Noll educated both Catholics and non-Catholics about the truths of the Catholic faith. The weekly Our Sunday Visitor newspaper became immensely popular throughout the country and expanded through the years with magazines, pamphlets, and books with the same aim.

During his episcopacy, Bishop Noll continued his publishing activities, teaching, spreading, and defending the faith in the Diocese of Fort Wayne and beyond. His national stature grew even more as he was called upon to serve in numerous capacities. Bishop Noll was elected secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the forerunner of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and was a long-time member of the Administrative Committee of the conference. He was also elected treasurer of the American Board of Catholic Missions, a natural fit considering his missionary zeal as well as his financial acumen.

Bishop Noll actively promoted Catholic lay apostolates and organizations and hosted in Fort Wayne national conventions of the newly established National Conference of Catholic Men and of the National Conference of Catholic Women. He was the chair of the NCWC’s Committee on Lay Organizations.

Through Our Sunday Visitor, Bishop Noll educated Catholics in the United States about the fierce persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico and anti-Catholic forces growing in Europe before the Second World War. He was an outspoken foe of atheistic communism. After the Second World War, Bishop Noll, especially through funds from Our Sunday Visitor, actively supported the resettlement of immigrants to the United States who had been displaced by the devastation of the war.

Bishop Noll was troubled by certain cultural currents of the time that he believed were leading to the nation’s moral decline. He was especially concerned about the moral content of motion pictures and popular fiction in magazines. He joined a group of bishops in forming the Legion of Decency to evaluate movies and to classify them according to their moral content, urging Catholics to pledge not to attend morally objectionable movies. Bishop Noll was also instrumental in the founding of the National Organization for Decent Literature to work to ban immoral magazines.

It is not a surprise that in 1946, given his financial abilities and the reach of Our Sunday Visitor, Bishop Noll was elected chair of the bishops’ committee to raise $7 million to complete the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The crypt church had been completed in 1927, but funds ran out, and the building of the upper church was postponed during the Great Depression and the Second World War. It took eight years, but the funds were raised, and the construction of the upper church resumed in 1954.

In 1953, Pope Pius XII gave Bishop Noll the title “archbishop,” even though the Diocese of Fort Wayne was not an archdiocese. He did so as a recognition of Bishop Noll’s service to the Church in the United States and his contributions to the Catholic press and publishing through Our Sunday Visitor.

One may wonder how Bishop Noll served as a local bishop, given his many national commitments and his leadership of Our Sunday Visitor. A man of great energy and capacity for work, Bishop Noll did not shirk his diocesan responsibilities. He was truly a pastor of the local Church. He was the first native son of the Diocese of Fort Wayne to serve as bishop of the diocese. He was an active shepherd who regularly visited parishes and schools. He was a good organizer and delegated competent priests to serve in diocesan administration.

The Diocese of Fort Wayne encompassed 42 counties, the northern half of the state of Indiana. Due to the growth in the Catholic population, 24 counties were separated from the diocese in 1944 to form the new Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.

During Bishop Noll’s tenure, the diocese grew not only in numbers but also in vitality. Bishop Noll established 25 new parishes. A strong advocate of Catholic education, he oversaw through the superintendent of schools the establishment of dozens of new parish schools and the recruitment of religious sisters and brothers of several congregations to teach in the schools. Bishop Noll vigorously promoted the establishment of central Catholic high schools mandated by the 1926 diocesan synod. He raised funds and established Central Catholic High School in Fort Wayne in 1939 and Saint Joseph High School in South Bend in 1953. He set up scholarships to assist needy students whose families struggled to afford tuition.

Bishop Noll’s zeal for evangelization, catechesis, and apologetics was evident on the local as well as the national level. He started our diocesan newspaper as an insert in Our Sunday Visitor’s national edition. He promoted many Catholic lay organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, the Holy Name Society, the NCCW and NCCM, and many other lay groups. Bishop Noll expanded Catholic Charities in the diocese and promoted the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Legion of Mary. Bishop Noll also arranged for the funding and construction of new buildings for the Saint Vincent Villa for Orphans in Fort Wayne after a fire heavily damaged the original 1886 building.

The number of priestly vocations in the diocese grew under Bishop Noll’s tenure as well. Using Our Sunday Visitor funds, as he so often did for diocesan building projects, Bishop Noll purchased an old hotel at Lake Wawasee to be a new high school seminary in the diocese, named Our Lady of the Lake, and funded the addition of a beautiful chapel to the building.

The diocesan and national accomplishments of Bishop Noll were many. Behind all his accomplishments was a man of deep faith, nurtured by his devout father, mother, stepmother, and his large family. His formation for the priesthood was rigorous at St. Lawrence Minor Seminary in Wisconsin and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West in Cincinnati. He was diligent and excelled in his studies of philosophy, theology, and languages. The spiritual discipline of the seminary further formed his heart and soul.

As a young priest, Father Noll served in mostly rural parishes where Catholics were small in number and where many non-Catholics had stereotypes and misinformation about the Catholic Church. The Catholics also needed better education in the faith as they encountered anti-Catholic prejudice and bigotry. Father Noll felt called to educate his people, to counter the lies and misinformation circulated by anti-Catholic individuals and groups. I believe it was his experience in these first years of his priestly life that Father Noll found his personal mission to evangelize and catechize, leading to his founding of Our Sunday Visitor and his creative publishing ventures that reaped great success locally and nationally.

The priestly life and ministry of Bishop Noll would not be complete without mentioning “the apple of his eye,” the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Victory. They were a missionary society of women catechists founded by a Chicago priest, Father John Sigstein, to teach and serve the poor, mostly Mexican, children and their families in the southwest United States. Bishop Noll became their principal financial benefactor and built a motherhouse for them in Huntington called “Victory Noll.” Bishop Noll was not only their benefactor but a friend and spiritual father. He truly enjoyed the sisters’ company and visited with them often, and he also invited the sisters and those in formation to his summer home on Sylvan Lake for recreation and relaxation, including teaching them how to fish! Bishop Noll chose to be buried in the Victory Noll cemetery, rather than the cathedral crypt, to be near the sisters and to be the beneficiary of their prayers.

Bishop John Francis Noll chose the second line of the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus as his episcopal motto: Mentes Tuorum Visita. It is a prayer to the Holy Spirit to “visit the minds of your own.” The mind is a power of the soul. We give thanks that the Holy Spirit indeed inspired Bishop Noll’s mind and soul. Bishop Noll’s legacy lives on in our diocese and in our country through the many fruits of his labors, including Our Sunday Visitor. As we remember the 100th anniversary of his episcopal ordination, may we be resolved to carry on his mission of spreading the truth and beauty of our Catholic faith, the Gospel of Jesus Christ!