COUNCIL INFORMATION
Biloxi Knights of Columbus, Council 1244
The establishment of Columbianism on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was due largely in part because of a New Orleanian by the name of James F. Durel who on one spring day in 1907 stepped off an excursion train in Biloxi to visit with his son. The subsequent meetings with Nativity's the Very Reverend Alphonse Ketels, and his assistant, Fr. Doherty, would set in motion a group of nine very prominent Catholic laymen who immediately set about to organize the council. Having been organized, it was then called the Gulf Coast Council 1244, and on Sunday, June 2, 1907, fifty applicants were the first to receive the rites of exemplification. There were over 600 visiting dignitaries visiting the Mississippi coast's first and only council. The Gulf Coast Council would later become the present Biloxi Knights of Columbus, Council 1244.