John Joseph Kain
John Joseph Kain was a Roman Catholic priest who served as the Bishop of Wheeling and later as the Archbishop of Saint Louis, being the first native-born American to hold that office.Biography
He was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia in 1841 to Jeremiah and Ellen Kain. After graduating from St. Charles College, located in Catonsville, Maryland in 1862, he enrolled at St. Mary's College and was ordained to the priesthood in 1866. He was then stationed in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, where he served the needs of Roman Catholics living in eight West Virginia counties and four Virginia counties. During his time there, he restored the churches of Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg, and rebuilt churches in Winchester, Virginia and Berkeley Springs, West Virginia that had been destroyed during the American Civil War.
One of Kain's sisters, Mary Josephine, served as a Catholic sister in Wheeling, West Virginia. Another sister, Margaret Kain, worked for Kain in his household as a housekeeper for most of his career.
He was consecrated as the bishop of Wheeling, West Virginia in 1875, and served there through 1893. During this period, he had roughly three dozen priests under his jurisdiction, meeting the needs of about 20,000 Catholics. In May, 1893, he was appointed coadjutor bishop with Peter Richard Kenrick of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Louis, and created a titular archbishop the next month. On Kenrick's death, in 1896, he succeeded him as Archbishop of St. Louis, and served in that capacity until his own death in 1903. Kain died in St. Agnes' Sanitarium in Baltimore, Maryland, after a long illness.He was interred in Calvary Cemetery in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Archbishop Kain is the namesake for an all-girls Roman Catholic high school, Rosati-Kain, located in the Central West End in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, located next to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis.
