Jude the Apostle
On June 17, 1968, Pope Paul VI erected the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg with territory taken from the Diocese of St. Augustine and the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Miami, making it a suffragan see for the same metropolitan archdiocese. He appointed Charles B. McLaughlin as the first Bishop of St. Petersburg and designated the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle in St. Petersburg as its seat. The newly created diocese stretched from Crystal River to Ft. Myers encompassing eleven counties. The first task of the Bronx native and former auxiliary bishop of Raleigh, North Carolina, was to establish a new diocesan structure to unify priests, personnel, policy, and people from the two dioceses. He also faced the challenge of dealing with the rapidly increasing population within his diocese.