On March 11, 1870, the Vatican erected the Diocese of St. Augustine. It covered most of the Florida peninsula until the 1950s, when Florida's expanding population necessitated the creation of new dioceses (until 1958 it was the only Catholic See in Florida).
History
1500 to 1550
Catholic Heritage of Florida Plaque in Cathedral-Basilica
The first Catholic presence in present-day Florida was the expedition of the Spaniard Juan Ponce de León, who arrived somewhere on the Gulf Coast in 1513. Hostility from the native Calusa people prevented him from landing. De Leon returned to the region with a colonizing expedition in 1521, landing near either Charlotte Harbor or the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. His expedition had 200 men, including several priests.[1]
In 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, hoping to find gold in Florida, landed near present day Port Charlotte or San Carlos Bay. He named the new territory "La Bahia de Espiritu Santo," in honor of the Holy Spirit.[2] DeSoto led an expedition of 10 ships and 620 men. His company included 12 priests, there to evangelize the Native Americans. His priests celebrated mass almost every day.[2] Unwilling to attack such a large expedition, the Calusa evacuated their settlements near the landing area. The De Soto expedition later proceeded to the Tampa Bay area and then into central Florida.
The Spanish missionary Reverend Luis de Cáncer arrived by sea with several Dominican priests in present day Bradenton in 1549. Encountering a seemingly peaceful party of Tocobaga clan members, they decided to travel on to Tampa Bay. Several of the priests went overland with the Tocobaga while Cáncer and the rest of the party sailed to Tampa Bay to meet them.[3]
Arriving at Tampa Bay, Cáncer learned, while still on his ship, that the Tocobaga had murdered the priests in the overland party. Ignoring advice to leave the area, Cáncer went ashore, where he too was murdered.[3] The Spanish attempted to establish another mission in the Tampa Bay area in 1567, but it was soon abandoned.[4]
1550 to 1700
The first Catholics in Eastern Florida were a group of Spanish Jesuits who founded a mission in 1566 on Upper Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. After several years of disease and turbulent relations with the Native American inhabitants, the missionaries returned to Spain.[5]The Spanish attempted to establish another mission in the Tampa Bay area in 1567, but soon abandoned it.[6]
In 1571, Spanish Jesuit missionaries made an brief, unsuccessful trip to Northern Florida. Two years later, in 1573, several Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived in present day St. Augustine. They established the Mission Nombre de Dios in 1587 at a village of the Timucuan people.[7] By 1606, Florida was under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Havana i n Cuba.
San Antón de Carlos was the first Jesuit mission in the Western Hemisphere and the first Catholic presence within the Venice area. Juan Rogel and Francisco de Villareal spent the winter at the mission studying the Calusa language, then started evangelizing among the Calusa in southern Florida. The Jesuits built a chapel at the mission in 1567. Conflicts with the Calusa soon increased, prompting Menéndez de Avilés to abandon San Antón de Carlos in 1569.[8]
In 1571, Spanish Jesuit missionaries made an brief, unsuccessful trip to Northern Florida. Two years later, in 1573, several Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived in present day St. Augustine. They established the Mission Nombre de Dios in 1587 at a village of the Timucuan people. By 1606, Florida was under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Havana i n Cuba.
1700 to 1800
By the early 1700's, the Spanish Franciscans had established a network of 40 missions in Northern and Central Florida, with 70 priests ministering to over 25,000 Native American converts.[9]
However, raids by British settlers and their Creek Native American allies from the Carolinas eventually shut down the missions. Part of the reason for the raids was that the Spanish colonists gave refuge to enslaved people who had escaped the Carolinas.[10] A number of Timucuan Catholic converts in Northern Florida were slaughtered during these incursions.
After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Spain ceded all of Florida to Great Britain for the return of Cuba. Given the antagonism of Protestant Great Britain to Catholicism, the majority of the Catholic population in Florida fled to Cuba.[11]
After the American Revolution, Spain regained control of Florida in 1784. from Great Britain.[12] In 1793, the Vatican changed the jurisdiction for Florida Catholics from Havana to the Apostolic Vicariate of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, based in New Orleans.[13]
1850 to 1870
Bishop Verot
In the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Spain ceded all of Florida to the United States, which established the Florida Territory in 1821.[14] In 1825, Pope Leo XII erected the Vicariate of Alabama and Florida, which included all of Florida, based in Mobile Alabama.[15]
In 1850, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Savannah, which included Georgia and all of Florida east of the Apalachicola River. In 1858, Pius IX moved Florida into a new Apostolic Vicariate of Florida and named Bishop Augustin Verot as vicar apostolic.[16] Since the new vicariate had only three priests, Vérot travelled to France in 1859 to recruit more. He succeeded in bringing back seven priests.[17] The first Catholic parish in Tampa, St. Louis, was founded in 1859. He also built new churches in Fernandina Beach and Tallahassee.[18] Three Christian Brothers from Canada opened a boys' school in St. Augustine.[18]
During the American Civil War, Vérot condemned the looting of the Catholic church at Amelia Island, Florida, by Union Army troops. He personally evacuated several Sisters of Mercy from Jacksonville to Savannah through the battle zone in Georgia.[19] After the war, Vérot published a pastoral letter urging Catholics in the diocese to "put away all prejudice... against their former servants". In 1866, the Sisters of St. Joseph were introduced from France, and despite the most adverse conditions, they had several flourishing schools and academies in operation before many years.
1870 to 1900
Bishop Moore
On March 11, 1870, Pius IX elevated the Vicariate of Florida into the Diocese of St. Augustine and named Vérot as its first bishop.[20] The new diocese covered all of Florida except for the Florida Panhandle region. Vérot died in 1876. In 1877, Pius IX named Reverend John Moore of Charleston as the second bishop of St. Augustine.
A contingent of Benedictine monks arrived in San Antonio, Florida, in 1886 initially to serve German immigrants. In 1887, a yellow fever outbreak in Florida killed several priests in the diocese. That same year, a fire destroyed the Cathedral of St. Augustine. At Moore's request, a group of Jesuit fathers arrived in Tampa, Florida, in 1888 to replace the priests lost to illness.[21] In August 1888, the St. Mary's Home for Orphan Girls was opened in Jacksonville, Florida. That same year, yellow fever broke out again in Jacksonville. With the local priest William J. Kenny sidelined by the disease, Moore rushed there to run the parish and tend to the sick.[21]
In 1889, Moore asked the Benedictines to establish several mission churches on the Florida Gulf Coast from Pasco County northward. He requested that the Jesuits cover Hillsborough County southward to Key West.[21] Moore died in 1901.
1900 to 1920
Bishop Curley
In 1902, Monsignor William Kenny was appointed as the third bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine by Pope Leo XIII. During his tenure as bishop, Kenny increased the recruitment of Irish priests and nuns, reorganized diocesan offices, expanded missionary efforts to Florida's interior and smaller towns, and more than doubled diocesan fundraising.[22] He also established the first Catholic parish for African Americans in the state.[22] In 1913, the Florida Legislature had passed legislation prohibiting white women from teaching African-American children, a measure aimed at non-segregated Catholic schools. Considering the law unconstitutional, Kenny told his teaching nuns to ignore it. Kenny died in 1913.
The next bishop of St. Augustine was Reverend Michael Curley, named by Pope Pius X in 1914. In 1916, Florida Governor Park Trammell ordered the arrest of three Sisters of St. Joseph for violating the law on teaching African-American children. Curley vigorously attacked their arrests as part of a campaign against Catholic schools, gaining strong support from other Catholic prelates in the United States.[23][24]
Curley attracted national attention in 1917 by successfully battling a bill in the Florida Legislature that would have mandated inspections of convents.[25][26][27] Curley refused to comply with it.[24] He led a successful legal campaign to have the law declared unconstitutional.[27] He also sought to educate Floridians about Catholicism and demonstrate the bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan.[24] By the end of his tenure, the Catholic population of the diocese had grown from 39,000 to 41,000, with 40 new churches built.[27] In 1921, Pope Benedict XV named Curley as the new archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
1920 to 2000
In 1922, Monsignor Patrick Barry was appointed the fifth bishop of St. Augustine by Pope Pius XI.[28] In 1931, Barry instituted an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche at the Mission Nombre de Dios in order to draw attention to the heritage of the Catholic Church in St. Augustine. In 1940, Barry founded Barry University in Miami Shores along with his family members.[29] Barry died in 1940 after 18 years in office.
Pius XII named Monsignor Joseph Hurley of the Diocese of Cleveland as the next bishop of St. Augustine. In 1958, Pius XII erected the Diocese of Miami, taking its territory in South Florida from the Diocese of Augustine.[30] Hurley was a staunch opponent of the American Civil Rights actions during the 1960s, even avoiding Martin Luther King Jr. at the airport when their paths crossed unexpectedly. King would eventually write Hurley a letter requesting his support for the movement, but failed to gain it.[31] Hurley died in 1967.
Estévez initiated the first ecumenical vespers at the bishop-level in Florida in 2014 at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. The service was attended by Protestant and Orthodox leaders, clergy and lay people. He attended the installation of Bishop Robert Schaefer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America near Tampa, Florida. He collaborated with local Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders in support of the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew in Jerusalem in 2014. In 2019, Estévez announced that the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, located in the Nombre de Dios mission, had been designated by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as a national shrine.[32] Estévez retired in 2022.
The parents of an 11-year-old girl met with Bishop Snyder in 1991 to say that their daughter told them she had been sexually assaulted by Reverend William Malone. Snyder had dismissed the allegations because the girl did not attend the meeting. However, in 1992, Snyder moved Malone to a different parish in Palm Coast. When Malone transferred back to New York that same year, the diocese learned that he had impregnated another girl. Snyder secretly arranged child support payments from the diocese to the girl.[33]
In 2003, the woman who accused Malone in 1991 repeated her allegations to Bishop Galeone. He never submitted the accusation to the diocesan review board, nor contacted the local district attorney. She returned to the diocese in 2018 with the same accusations. This time, the review board looked at the allegations and deemed them credible.[33] After Malone was publicly listed with credible accusations, three more women in 2019 accused him of sexual abuse.
In March 2020, the diocese removed Reverend John H. Dux from ministry after determining that sex abuse allegations against him from 1976 were credible.[34] His accuser, Patrick Colville, said that Dux took him when he was 14 to the Florida State Fair near Tampa in 1976. That night in a hotel room, Dux forced Colville to perform oral sex.[35] A second man came forward to accuse Dux of similar alleged crimes between 1980 and 1982 at St. Madeleine Sophie in High Springs.[35]
In November 2020, the state of Florida released a list of 97 Catholic priests who were "credibly accused" of committing sex abuse, with five accused of committing sex abuse while serving in the diocese.[36] However, a total of 13 priests on this statewide list were tied to the diocese.[37]
Coat of arms of Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine
Notes
Arms was designed and adopted when the diocese was erected
Adopted
1870
Escutcheon
The diocesan coats of arms has a background of red (gules) and silver (argent) quarters. It displays a flaming heart pierced by a gold arrow.
Symbolism
The red and silver background represent the fields of Castile and Leon in Spain. The flaming heart pierced by the gold arrow is the traditional emblem of Augustine of Hippo, symbolizing his quotation from Confessions, Chapter 1: "Our hearts shall ever restless be, until they find their rest in Thee."
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore is the archdiocese of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in northern and western Maryland in the United States. It is the metropolitan see of the Ecclesiastical Province of Baltimore.
Michael Joseph Curley was an Irish-born Catholic prelate who served as the first Archbishop of Washington (1939–1947). He previously served as Archbishop of Baltimore (1921–1947) and as Bishop of St. Augustine (1914–1921).
Former names: Apostolic Vicariate of Alabama and the Floridas (1825-1829), Diocese of Mobile, Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham (1954-1969).
The Diocese of Savannah is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southern Georgia in the United States. The mother church of the diocese is Cathedral Basilica of Saint John the Baptist in Savannah. The patron saint is John the Baptist.
The Diocese of Jackson is a Latin Church diocese in Mississippi in the United States. Its ecclesiastical jurisdiction includes the northern and central parts of the state, an area of 97,458 square kilometers (37,629 sq mi). It is the largest diocese, by area, east of the Mississippi River.
The Archdiocese of Miami is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in South Florida in the United States. It is the metropolitan see for the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami, which covers all of Florida. The Archdiocese of Miami contains the Florida counties Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe.
The Diocese of Salina is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northern Kansas in the United States.
The Diocese of Orlando is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in central Florida in the United States. St. James Cathedral serves as the seat of the diocese. As of 2024, the bishop is John Gerard Noonan.
The Diocese of Palm Beach is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in eastern Florida in the United States The patron saint of the diocese is Mary, mother of Jesus, under the title Queen of the Apostles.
The Catholic Diocese of Pensacola–Tallahassee is a Latin Church diocese in the Florida Panhandle region of the United States. The patron saint of the diocese is St. Michael the Archangel.
The Diocese of Venice in Florida is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory–or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southwest Florida in the United States. It was founded on June 16, 1984. Frank Dewane has been bishop since 2007. The Diocese of Venice in Florida is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Miami.
The Diocese of Saint Petersburg is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the Tampa Bay region of Gulf Coast Florida.
The Diocese of Portland is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church for the entire state of Maine in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Boston.
John Moore was an Irish-born prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the second bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida from 1877 to 1901.
Victor Benito Galeone was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida from 2001 to 2011.
John Joseph Snyder was an American prelate of the Catholic Church, He served as the eighth bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida from 1979 to 2000. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn in New York from 1972 to 1979
Jean Marcel Pierre Auguste Vérot, known commonly as Augustin Vérot was a French-born American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the first bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida (1870–1876).
Patrick Joseph Barry DD was an Irish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida from 1922 until his death in 1940.
Felipe de Jesús Estévez is a Cuban-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who was bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida from 2011 to 2022. Estévez previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami in Florida from 2003 to 2011.
Thomas Joseph McDonough was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida (1947–1957), as auxiliary bishop and bishop of the Diocese of Savannah in Georgia (1957–1967) and as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Louisville in Kentucky (1967–1981).
1 2 Robert S. Weddle (2006). "Soto's Problems of Orientation". In Galloway, Patricia Kay (ed.). The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and "Discovery" in the Southeast (Newed.). University of Nebraska Press. p.223. ISBN978-0-8032-7122-7. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
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United States 
17 counties in northeastern Florida: Alachua Baker Bradford Clay Columbia Dixie Duval Flagler Gilchrist Hamilton Lafayette Levy Nassau Putnam St. Johns Suwannee Union 
