Our Sunday Visitor founded in 1912

The most Reverend John Francis Noll, D.D., then parish priest of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, worked to publish the first Our Sunday Visitor on May 5, 1912 in Huntington, Indiana. Today Our Sunday Visitor is not only an American national weekly newspaper, but is a firm and the largest Catholic publishing company in the world.

Noll was a small town priest who later became Bishop of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Having grown weary of anti-Catholic literature, he developed Our Sunday Visitor. 35,000 copies were distributed at its first publishing. The business was first located at the corner of Jefferson and Park Drive with one printing press. It later became the former Wolf & Dessauer building and is now the location of Rotary Centennial Park.

A facility specially designed for publishing was erected and housed the firm in 1924 at the corner of Warren and Park Drive immediately behind the original. The building then became E-Systems Memcor and now houses the Park Lofts at Huntington.

Today Our Sunday Visitor is located in Noll Plaza, Old U.S. 24 East. This location was built in 1961. From its inception Our Sunday Visitor documented the history of the Catholic Church and continues in this endeavor today. The Catholic publishing company prints the weekly newspaper and numerous periodicals, religious books, school curriculum, pamphlets, catechetical materials and inserts for parish bulletins. It develops church management software, “Faith in Action” websites for parishes and has an Offertory Solutions Division.

According to its history, the initial focus of Our Sunday Visitor was to combat anti-Catholic teachings, help Catholics learn about their faith, preserve their identity and fight against social injustice. Later Catholics learned ways to preserve their faith in a secular society. The newspaper also took positions against birth control, divorce and indecent literature and movies. It warned Catholics away from joining communist groups.

Bishop Noll suffered a stroke in 1954 and passed away on July 31, 1956. After his death, the paper continued and the full publishing wing expanded by purchasing Harcourt Religion in 2009. In July 2012 Our Sunday Visitor was selected by the Vatican as the exclusive distributor of the North American English edition of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

Kyle Hamilton is the current Chief Operating Officer of Our Sunday Visitor, Scott Richert is publisher and Father Patrick Mary Briscoe, O.P. is the editor of Our Sunday Visitor. The not-for-profit business reaches eight to 10 million people and is located at 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, Indiana. The website is osv.com.

In July 2022, the US services of Catholic News Service closed, and Our Sunday Visitor launched a new online news agency on January 1, 2023: OSV News. Gretchen Crowe is editor-in-chief and the website: osvnews.com.

According to the website, today OSV’s mission is to help Catholics fulfill their calling to discipleship, strengthen their relationship with Christ, deepen their commitment to the Church and contribute to its growth and vitality in the world. OSV is a vibrant, multi-faceted company. Those employed by OSV are publishers, consultants, educators, manufacturers, technology experts and a dynamic group of forward-thinkers serving the church. OSV employs over 350 people in 18 states, and serves over 17,000 faith-based clients around the country.