Red Mass

The 9th annual Red Mass and Dinner will held on Monday, October 6, at 5:30p ET at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Lafayette. Bishop Timothy L. Doherty will celebrate Mass; dinner and a presentation will follow.

Nicole Stelle Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, where she also serves as the Associate Dean for External Engagement and directs the Notre Dame Education Law Project. Her teaching and research focus on education law and policy, religious liberty, and topics related to property law. In addition to dozens of articles on these subjects, she is the author of Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (Yale University Press, 2009).

Garnett received her B.A. with distinction in Political Science from Stanford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Morris S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining the law school faculty in 1999, she worked for two years as a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice, a non-profit public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., where she helped to defend the constitutionality of the nation's first private-school-choice programs.

• 2024 - Mr. Peter J. Rusthoven
• 2023 - Indiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Derek Molter
• 2022 - Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki
• 2021 - Deacon Marc R. Kellams
• 2019 - United States District Judge James Patrick Hanlon
• 2018 - United States District Court Chief Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson
• 2017 - Indiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Mark S. Massa 
• 2016 - Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta H. Rush

The tradition of the Red Mass was begun by Pope Innocent IV in 1243 for the Ecclesial Judical Court asking the invocation of the Holy Spirit as a source of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude and strength for the coming term of the court.

The word "red" was originally used to describe the Mass in 1310, because the justices of the English Supreme Court wore scarlet robes. Over time the "Red" Mass came to have a deeper theological meaning, with red symbolizing the tongues of fire that descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost and the martyrdom of saints such as Thomas More (patron saint of lawyers) and John Cardinal Fisher.

In the United States the first Red Mass was celebrated in New York City on October 6, 1928, at Old St. Andrew's Church with Patrick Cardinal Hayes. Today many dioceses throughout the United States celebrate a Red Mass each year, not only with fellow Catholics in the legal community, but with persons of all faith traditions in attendance.