Kentucky Irish American., 1914-04-11
See Was Transferred From
Bardstown to This City
i'm 1871.
Diocese Included Entire North
west as It Was Then
Known.
BALTIMORE FIRST ARCHDIOCESE

There are now more than
l5,OOO,OOO OF Catholics in the
United States. We have three MEM
bers of the Sacred College and Rome
is represented at Washington by an
Apostolic Delegate. The country is
divided into fourteen ecclesiastical
provinces, each governed by its
| Metropolitan, and there are nearly
100 suffragan Bishops, each charged
with the care of his own diocese.
The number of Catholic priests,
churches, schools, academies, col
leges and other religious institutions
are too many to be accurately
enumerated, for what would be true
today would be short of the mark
tomorrow.
And yet it is only LOG years since
we had but single Bishop, the
Right Rev. John Carroll, of Balti-
more, with our country as a diocese,
the anniversary of the first division
OF which we note in our Catholic
American chronology under date of
April 8, 1908. The contrast is strik-
ing; the lesson obvious.
When Father Carroll, s. j., ar
rived in Maryland from England,
June 26, 1774, in consequence of
the suppression of the Jesuits, whose
society he had Joined at Liege in
1853, there was not a single pub
lie Catholic church or place of
worship in the State of Maryland,
chiefly owing to the laws against
Catholics in that State, in which
Catholics had been the first to pro-
claim religious liberty and freedom
of conscience.
When ten years later the same
Father John Carroll, on November
26, 1884, was appointed PrefecI
Apostolic of the whole United States
there were about 5000 Catholics in
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia
and New York, and they were minis
tered !. = ed to by a few score of misSssa5s--
Less than twenty-five years later
the number of Catholics, priests and
churches had increased to such an
extent, as the laws discriminating
against them were one by one taken
from the statute books, that at
Bishop John Carroll's request Plus
VIZ. issued bulls for the division of
the diocese of Baltimore, the crea-
ton of the sees of New York, Boston,
Philadelphia and Bardstown, and the
appointment of four new Bishops.
Baltimore became an archdiocese
and Bishop Carroll an Archbishop.
New York never saw her first
Bishop, for though the Irish Domini-
can prior of st. Clements, Father
Richard Luke Concanen, was conse-
Grated in Rome on April "a, 1903,
he was unable to leave Europe
owing to the troubled political con-
ditions of the time, and he died of
fever at Naples on January 10, 1910,
while awaiting transportation.
Boston's first Bishop, the sanity
John Louis Cheverus, who had led
the life of a hard working mission
airy since his arrival in 1895, was not
consecrated until November /, 1910,
and after herculean labors in New
England he resigned and died Car
dinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux. July
10, 1896.
Philadelphia's first Bishop was
Father Michael Egan, o. s. F.,
Bishop Carrolls Vicar General in
that city, and the delayed bulls pre-
vented his conservation until October
28, 1910. After a brief administra-
tion he died at the age of fifty-three,
July 22, 1914.
Father Benedict Joseph Flaget
was not only the first but also the
third Bishop of the old diocese of
Bardstown, which on its establish
ment included the entire Northwest
as 1t was then known. He was con-
secrated November 4, 1910; re-
signed in 1880 and was reappointed
as the successor of his own sue
cessor. the Right Rev. John Baptist
Mary David. In 1S41 the episcopal
see was transferred to Louisville
and Bishop Flaget became the first
Bishop of Louisville and governed
both dioceses until his death, Febru-
airy IL, 1850. He lived long enough
to witness the establishment of ten
dioceses out of the territory that
was included in his original jurisdic-