Fr. Joseph Nelson, OFM

Fr. Joe Nelson, OFM, was born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, and studied for the Franciscan priesthood after St. Lawrence grade school. He served parishes in Louisville, Bloomington, Illinois, and Batesville, Indiana, and then as co-pastor of three churches on the last sixty miles of the Mississippi River delta, and for seven years as pastor in Roswell, New Mexico.

At fifty he learned Spanish and spent eight and a half years as a missionary in a poor neighborhood of Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua, Mexico. He went on to Hispanic ministry in Cincinnati, where he helped establish the Su Casa Hispanic Ministry Center, to work with immigrants and the poor in El Paso, and to lead the Office of Mission and Evangelization for Our Lady of Guadalupe Province. He lives in Oldenburg, Indiana.