Catholic Financial Life – CFL

Catholic Family Life Insurance was founded in the State of Wisconsin in 1868 by the Most Rev. John Martin Henni, first Archbishop of Milwaukee. In August 1868, he gathered 21 men from a variety of occupations and they established The Family Protective Association.

The new organization was officially incorporated in March, 1869. As the oldest Catholic fraternal benefit society, CFLI would become the first to insure women and children, and first to provide Masses for living and deceased members. Over the years several societies merged with CFLI, including Rhode Island-based Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste in 1991, and Northern Fraternal Life, headquartered in Milwaukee, two years later. Its name changed to Catholic Family Life Insurance (CFLI) in 1949. At the time of merger with Catholic Knights, CFLI, with headquarters in the northern Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, had a total of 45,000 members in 78 chapters located primarily in the upper Midwest and New England.