Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana Archives

Dom Leo Kenneth Douglas Patterson

Dom Leo K. D. Patterson was born Kenneth Patterson on 7 December 1912 in Milwaukee, the son of George Stoddard and Lea Marie (Decker) Patterson. He graduated from Nashotah House in 1936 and served at St Bartholomew's Church, Pewaukee, Wisconsin, from 1934 to 1936. The following year he went to England to study at Nashdom Abbey as a monk. He was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Oxford in 1937 and returned to the U.S. in 1939. He settled at Valparaiso, Indiana, where with Dom Paul Severance, Dom Francis Bacon, and Dom Mainrad Back, he helped to establish St. Gregory's House, serving jointly at St. Andrew's Valparaiso and St. Stephen's Hobart. He left the order in 1941 to serve as a parish priest, with Bishop Campbell Gray giving him charge of St. James in Goshen, St. John's in Bristol, and Trinity Mission in Kendallville. He served them all between 1941 to 1945. He then went to St. Alban's the Martyr at Indiana Harbor from 1945 to 1948, but that mission was in the process of decline. He also served St. Augustine's in Gary from 1947 to 1948. Later in 1948 he moved to St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan, and was restored to the Benedictine order that he had left. He remained there until his death on 2 April 1994.


 

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