Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine

The Diocese of St. Augustine () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory of the Catholic Church, located in the northeastern section of Florida in the United States. It includes the cities of St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and Gainesville.

The Diocese of St. Augustine is a suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami, covering much of North Florida,  The bishop's seat is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine.  As of 2023, the current bishop is Erik T. Pohlmeier.

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.

History

1500 to 1850 
In the mid-1500s, present day Florida became a Spanish colony. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565 established the Nombre de Dios Mission in St. Augustine. His company included four priests, who were tasked to evangelize the Native American tribes. These priests celebrated the first mass in what would become the United States.

The Diocese of Santiago de Cuba established the first parish in the future United States in St. Augustine, appointing Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales as its first priest. Pending the arrival of regular missionaries, Menéndez appointed several soldiers  to provide religious instruction to the Native Americans.

After the signing of the 1763 Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years War, the British took control of the Spanish colonies in Florida, prompting many Catholic settlers to leave. In 1783, after the end of the American Revolution, the British returned all of Florida to Spain and Catholic settlers began returning to the area.

In 1793, Pope Pius VI established the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas with jurisdiction over all of Spanish Florida.

In 1821, Spain ceded all of Florida to the United States. Four years later, the Vatican created the new Vicariate Apostolic of Alabama and Florida and named Michael Portier as the apostolic vicar.

1850 to 1870 
While in Europe, Vérot also secured funding to repair churches in St. Augustine and elsewhere in Florida. Florida. He also built new churches in Tampa, Fernandina Beach and Tallahassee. Three Christian Brothers from Canada opened a boys' school in St. Augustine.

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. 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 
On March 11, 1870, Pius IX elevated the Vicariate of Florida into the Diocese of St. Augustine and named Vérot as its first bishop. 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. 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. 
 
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. Moore died in 1901.

1900 to 1920 
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. He also established the first Catholic parish for African Americans in the state. 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.

Curley attracted national attention in 1917 by successfully battling a bill in the Florida Legislature that would have mandated inspections of convents. Curley refused to comply with it. He led a successful legal campaign to have the law declared unconstitutional. He also sought to educate Floridians about Catholicism and demonstrate the bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Hurley died in 1967.

Bishop Paul Tanner, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, was the next bishop of St. Augustine, selected by Pope Paul VI in 1968. That same year, the pope erected the Dioceses of Orlando and St. Petersburg, both taking territory from the Diocese of St. Augustine. In 1975, Paul VI erected the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, taking more territory from St. Augustine. Tanner retired in 1979.  His replacement was Auxiliary Bishop John J. Snyder from the Diocese of Brooklyn, named by Pope John Paul II that same year. Snyder entered retirement in 2000.

2000 to present 
In 2001, John Paul II appointed Monsignor Victor Galeone of the Archdiocese of Baltimore as bishop of St. Augustine. Galeone retired in 2011 and Pope Benedict XVI replaced him with Auxiliary Bishop Felipe de Jesús Estévez of Miami.

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. Estévez retired in 2022.

The current bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine is Bishop Erik T. Pohlmeier from the Diocese of Little Rock, appointed by Pope Francis in 2022

Sex abuse 
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.

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. After Malone was publicly listed with credible accusations, three more women in 2019 accused him of sexual abuse.

In April 2016, Galeone removed Reverend Stephen Charest from his post as pastor of Holy Spirit Parish in Lake Wales.  Charest had been arrested earlier that month for solicitation to commit lewdness. Charest was arrested after soliciting a sex act from an undercover sheriff's deputy in a wooded area in the town.

In March 2020, the diocese removed Reverend John H. Dux from ministry after determining that sex abuse allegations against him from 1976 were credible. 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. A second man came forward to accuse Dux of similar alleged crimes between 1980 and 1982 at St. Madeleine Sophie in High Springs.

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. However, a total of 13 priests on this statewide list were tied to the diocese.

Bishops

Bishops of Saint Augustine
 Augustin Verot, P.S.S. (1870–1876)
 John Moore (1877–1901)
 William John Kenny (1902–1913)
 Michael Joseph Curley (1914–1921), appointed Archbishop of Baltimore-Washington
 Patrick Joseph Barry (1922–1940)
 Joseph Patrick Hurley (1940–1967), Archbishop (personal title) in 1949
 Paul Francis Tanner (1968–1979)
 John J. Snyder (1979–2000)
 Victor Galeone (2001–2011)
 Felipe de Jesús Estévez (2011–2022)
 Erik T. Pohlmeier (2022–present)

Auxiliary bishop
Thomas Joseph McDonough (1947-1957), appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Savannah and later Bishop of Savannah and Archbishop of Louisville

Other diocesan priests who became bishops
Maurice Patrick Foley, appointed Bishop of Tuguegarao in the Philippines in 1910
William Turner, appointed Bishop of Buffalo in 1919
John Joseph Fitzpatrick (priest here, 1948–1958), appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Miami in 1968 and later Bishop of Brownsville
William Thomas Larkin, appointed Bishop of Saint Petersburg in 1979
Joseph Keith Symons, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Petersburg in 1981
Robert Joseph Baker, appointed Bishop of Charleston in 1999 and later Bishop of Birmingham
Thanh Thai Nguyen, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Orange in 2017

Education

High schools 
 Bishop John J. Snyder High School – Jacksonville
 Bishop Kenny High School – Jacksonville
 Morning Star High School – Jacksonville
 St. Francis High School – Gainesville
 St. Joseph Academy – St. Augustine

Elementary schools 
Annunciation – Middleburg
Assumption  – Jacksonville
Blessed Trinity – Jacksonville
Cathedral Parish – St. Augustine
Christ the King – Jacksonville
Epiphany – Lake City
Guardian – Jacksonville
Holy Family – Jacksonville
Holy Spirit – Jacksonville
Morning Star – Jacksonville
Palmer Academy – Ponte Vedra Beach
Queen of Peace – Gainesville
Resurrection – Jacksonville
Sacred Heart 
St Elizabeth Ann Seton – Palm Coast
St. Joseph – Jacksonville
St. Matthew – Jacksonville
St. Michael Academy – Fernandina Beach
St. Patrick – Jacksonville 
St. Patrick Interparish – Gainesville
St. Paul – Jacksonville Beach
St. Paul – Riverside
San Jose – Jacksonville,
San Juan del Rio – Saint Johns

Parishes
There are 53 active parishes in the Diocese of St. Augustine.

Basilicas
Basilica of the Immaculate Conception - Pope Francis raised Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville to a Minor Basilica in 2013.
Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine (St. Augustine, Florida) - Originally established in 1565 and re-built in the 18th century, it is the oldest church in Florida.

Coat of arms

See also

 Catholic Church by country
 Catholic Church hierarchy
 List of the Catholic dioceses of the United States

References

External links

Christianity in Jacksonville, Florida
Saint Augustine
Saint Augustin
Saint Augustin
 
St. Augustine, Florida
1870 establishments in Florida