DANIEL RUDD

“Founder of Black Lay Catholic Congresses”

Daniel Rudd (1854-1932) deserves a more honorable monument than an obscure grave in the cemetery of Bardstown, KY. As editor of the only Catholic newspaper owned and published by African-Americans, his vision and purpose stretched beyond the immediate and provincial to the future and to the country as a whole. Historians Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., and Albert Raboteau see Rudd as initiator of a national black Catholic movement unprecedented in the history of the American Catholic Church.