John Henni

John Martin Henni (June 15, 1805 – September 7, 1881) was a Swiss-born Catholic prelate who served as the first Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1843 until his death in 1881.

John Henni was born on June 15, 1805, in the village of Misanenga, municipality of Obersaxen, in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. He received his early education in St. Gallen and Lucerne. Switzerland. After Henni decided to become a priest, his bishop sent him to study philosophy and theology in Rome in 1824.

During this period, most of the bishops in the United States were forced to travel to Europe to find future priests for their parishes. While Henni was in Rome, he was recruited by Bishop Edward Fenwick to complete his seminary studies in the United States and be ordained for the Diocese of Cincinnati. Since his diocese contained many German-speaking immigrants, Fenwick needed a priest who was fluent in that language. After arriving in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, Henni traveled to Bardstown, Kentucky, to complete his studies at Saint Thomas Seminary.

Henni was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Cincinnati by Fenwick on February 2, 1829. After his ordination, the diocese assigned Henni to the pastoral staff of St. Peter Parish in Cincinnati, a parish for German immigrants. He was also named to the faculty of the Athenaeum, the Jesuit college in Cincinnati, to teach philosophy to seminarians.

The diocese in 1830 transferred Henni to Canton, Ohio, to serve as pastor of St. John parish, along with several mission churches in the region. He was recalled to Cincinnati In 1834 to become pastor of Holy Trinity Church, another German parish. That same year, John Purcell, the new bishop in Cincinnati, named Henni as vicar general of the diocese.

Henni returned to Europe for a visit in 1836. While then, he published an account of missionary activity in Ohio with the hopes of motivating some seminarians to go there. After returning to Cincinnati, Henni founded the Wahrheits-Freund in 1837, the first German Catholic newspaper in the United States. He served as its editor until 1843.

Henni also organized the St. Aloysius' Orphans Aid Society in the Bond Hill section of Cincinnati. In May 1843, he accompanied Purcell to Baltimore for to the Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, a meeting of all the bishops in the United States. At the meeting, he proposed the establishment of a seminary to prepare priests to minister to the large German immigrant population in the United States. However, the bishops did not act on his proposal.

On November 28, 1843, Henni was appointed the first bishop of the newly erected Diocese of Milwaukee by Pope Gregory XVI. This was another American diocese with a large German population. Henni received his episcopal consecration on March 19, 1844, from Purcell, with Bishops Michael O'Connor and Richard Pius Miles serving as co-consecrators. At this time, the diocese covered the entire State of Wisconsin.