Event on 6 November at the past. 1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. John Carroll, (January 8, 1735 – December 3, 1815) was the first Roman Catholic bishop and archbishop in the United States, serving as the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He is also known as the founder of Georgetown University, (the oldest Roman Catholic university in the United States), and of St. John the Evangelist Parish of Rock Creek, (now Forest Glen), the first secular (diocesan) parish in the country. John Carroll was born to Daniel Carroll I, a native of Ireland, and Eleanor Darnall Carroll, of English descent, at the large plantation which Eleanor Darnall had inherited from her family. He spent his early years at the family home, sited on thousands of acres near Upper Marlboro, the county seat of Prince Georges County in Maryland. (Several remnant surrounding acres are now associated with the house museum known as Darnalls Chance, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and part of the system of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission for northern suburban Washington, D.C.). Older Carroll relatives were instrumental in the development of the colonial Province of Maryland and the establishment of the soon-to-be third largest city in America, the founding of the Chesapeake Bay port town of Baltimore (1729). His older brother Daniel Carroll II, (1730-1796), became one of only five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (1778) and the Constitution of the United States (1787). His cousin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), was also an important member of the Revolutionary Patriot cause, and was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and lived long enough to have his life cross over into a new level of the industrial revolution with the ceremonies of the setting of the first stone for the beginning of the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828. John Carroll was educated at the College of St. Omer in French Flanders (northern France, bordering southern edge of modern Belgium). (This was established for the education of English Catholics after suffering discrimination following the Protestant Reformation instituted by King Henry VIII in England. During the upheavals following the French Revolution, (1789-1793), the College migrated to Bruges, and then Liège before finally settling at Stonyhurst in England in 1794, where it remains today.) Also attending St. Omer with him was his cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), who was to become the only Catholic signatory of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the first United States Senator (1789) from Maryland. The American clergy, originally reluctant to request the formation of a diocese due to fears of public misunderstanding and the possibility of a foreign bishop being imposed upon them, eventually recognized the need for a Roman Catholic bishop. The election of Samuel Seabury (1729–1796) in 1783 as the first Anglican bishop in the United States had already shown that Americans would not necessarily be hostile to the appointment of a Protestant bishop. The American clergy had also received the assurances of the Continental Congress that it would not object to election of a bishop whose allegiance was to Rome. Seeing the need of a bishop, and that an American, Carroll, as Prefect Apostolic in February 1785, urged Cardinal Antonelli, that some method of appointing church authorities be adopted by Rome that would not make it appear as if they were receiving their appointment from a foreign power. A report of the status of Catholics in Maryland was appended to his letter, where he stated that despite there being then only nineteen priests in Maryland, some of the more prominent families were still Catholics in faith, though prone to dancing and novel-reading. The pope was so pleased with Father Carrolls report that he granted his request that the priests in Maryland be allowed to suggest two or three names from which the Pope would choose their bishop. The priests of Maryland petitioned Rome for a bishop for the United States. Cardinal Antonelli replied, allowing the priests on the mission to select the city and, for this case only, to name the candidate for presentation to the pope. Carroll was selected Bishop of Baltimore by the clergy of the new nation in April 1789 by a vote of 24 out of 26 and on November 6, 1789 Pope Pius VI in Rome approved the election, naming Carroll the first Roman Catholic bishop in the newly independent United States. He was ordained and consecrated a bishop by Bishop Charles Walmesley on August 15, 1790, (the Feast of the Assumption) in the chapel of Lulworth Castle in Dorset, England, without the oath which the Anglican bishop Seabury had encountered. He was invested in his office in Maryland upon his return after another trans-Atlantic journey at the parish of St. Thomas Manor, in Charles County, Maryland and on his arrival in Baltimore took his chair in the Church of St. Peter, which would serve as his pro-cathedral. St. Peters was the first Catholic parish in Baltimore Town in 1770 and was located at the northwestern corner of North Charles Street and West Saratoga Street, with an attached rectory, school and surrounded by a cemetery. Interestingly, Old St. Peters was across the street and opposite from the Mother Church of the Anglican Church in Baltimore, Old St. Pauls Church (Anglican/Episcopal) at the southeast corner of Charles and Saratoga, surrounded by its cemetery overlooking the cliffs of the Jones Falls stream to the east. St. Pauls has had four successive structures at the same site since first moving to Baltimore Town in 1730, the year after it was laid out, from Patapsco Neck in southeastern Baltimore County, where it was organized in 1692 as one of the Original Thirty Anglican Church parishes designated in the colonial Province of Maryland. An example of Catholic-Anglican neighbors for over seventy years in downtown Baltimore (1770-1841). Carroll died in Baltimore on December 3, 1815. His remains are interred in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which can be visited by the public.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 12:38:26 +0000
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