Historical U.S. and Canada Free Online Catholic Newspapers

The Ancestor Hunt regularly adds and updates new collection links, as well as searches for and fixes broken links.
(This page's most recent update is October 2026)

Get all free genealogy resources for your state, organized and ready to use — The Research Library

For those of you who have Catholic ancestry in your family tree, there are lots of newspapers that have been published in the past that may help you find some information and stories about your ancestors.

​I recently became aware of the Catholic Newspapers Program, which is a result of a project started in 2011 by the Catholic Research Resources Alliance. From their website: “The goal and scope of the program is to provide access to all extant Catholic newspapers published in North America.”

They have created a list of free links to historic and current Catholic newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. As a result of contacting them and reviewing their project and website, they have allowed me to re-sort their list by location and publish it here. I highly recommend that you visit their list, as it includes some useful notes about each newspaper, as well as publishing institutions and other info that will help you.  It can be found at Catholic Newspapers Online. My thanks to Pat Lawton, the Catholic Research Resources Alliance Digital Projects Librarian for her help in this effort.

The list below is a combination of those found in the Catholic Newspapers Program as well as many that I have discovered myself, from many other collections.

Although the majority of the collections on this list are from more recent publication dates, there are quite a few that are from the more distant past. Take a look at these sites and search them for info about your ancestors. I have also added other online Catholic historic newspaper sites.

Canada

British Columbia

Nova Scotia

Ontario

Quebec

Saskatchewan

United States

All States

Alabama 

Alaska

Arkansas

Arizona

California

Colorado

Connecticut

District of Columbia

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Iowa

Illinois

Indiana

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Massachusetts

Maryland

Maine

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

Mississippi

Montana

Nebraska

New Jersey

North Carolina

North Dakota

New Mexico

New York

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Vermont

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

8 replies on “Historical U.S. and Canada Free Online Catholic Newspapers”

As a result of your work I was able to find an obituary for my 2x great-grandfather James Quarry published in The Irish Canadian shortly after his death at Mt. Carmel, Ontario on Oct 16, 1874. It gives cause of death but also place of origin in Bandon, Ireland. I had suspected the family might have originated in Bandon but this confirms it. Thanks for giving me one of those rare and wonderful moments in my ancestor search.

Just wanted to let you know I think the link for the Bien Republic is off slightly, I found it at http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/1936323

Sadly, the Boston Pilot still requires visiting an affiliate of CRL 🙁

Not sure if this listing is correct: “Toronto The Catholic Register – 1893-1922.” Did a search within the collection but no newspapers came up for 1914.

Looks like it only goes until 1908. Bad Title it looks like. That happens a lot where the title says one date range but in actuality it is something else. I do not know why the publishers of the database aren’t more careful with the date ranges.

The Archdiocese of Omaha’s newspaper is now available online.

Here’s the URL:
http://catholicvoiceomaha.advantage-preservation.com/

Thanks for the heads up. Those papers will be listed in the next Nebraska and Catholic papers updates.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *