page_title: Leonard Neale
section_title: Archbishop of Baltimore
hierarchical_section_title: Leonard Neale / Prelate of Baltimore / Archbishop of Baltimore
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the Most Rev. Leonard Neale, Archbishop of Baltimore, published in 1857
context_page_description: Leonard Neale was an American Catholic prelate and Jesuit who became the Archbishop of Baltimore and the first Catholic bishop to be ordained in the United States. While president of Georgetown College, Neale became the coadjutor bishop to John Carroll and founded the Georgetown Visitation Monastery.
  Neale was born in the British Province of Maryland to a prominent Maryland family that produced many Catholic leaders, including his brothers, Francis and Charles. He was sent to the Colleges of St Omer, Bruges and Liège in 1758, where he studied, taught, entered the Society of Jesus in 1767, and was ordained a priest in 1773. With the suppression of the Jesuits several months later, Neale took up ministry in rural England, before volunteering to go to British Guiana as a missionary in 1779. He spent four years there, before becoming discouraged by the resistance from both the British colonists and indigenous people in his efforts to proselytize. Therefore, after 25 years, he returned to Maryland, where he rejoined the former Jesuits at St. Thomas Manor for 10 years.
  In 1793, Neale volunteered to become the pastor of Old St. Joseph's and Old St.
context_section_description: When John Carroll died, Neale succeeded him as the second Archbishop of Baltimore on December 3, 1815, and he received the pallium from Pope Pius VII the following year. He ascended to the position at the age of 70, and his health had begun to deteriorate. Rather than moving to Baltimore, Neale continued to reside in Georgetown, near the Visitation nuns. One of his first acts was to request that Pope Pius VII formally recognize the Visitation nuns' community. With the pope's approval, Neale officially recognized the community as the Georgetown Visitation Monastery. For this, he was recognized as the founder of the institution.
  The most significant challenge that Neale faced during his time as archbishop was the growing phenomenon of lay trusteeism in the United States, whereby the states vested the ownership of church property and management of its affairs, including the selection of the church's priests, in a board of lay trustees elected by parishioners. While facially compliant with the Catholic canon law of jus patronatus, this arrangement often resulted in the trustees defying the orders of bishops in managing the churches. Neale inherited much of this conflict that arose during his predecessor's tenure. His first conflicts were with boards of trustees in Philadelphia in 1796, and in Norfolk, Virginia.
  A much larger controversy would be found in Charleston, South Carolina which would come to be known as the Charleston Schism of 1815 to 1818. In 1815, Carroll assigned the French priest Pierre-Joseph de Clorivière as the pastor of St. Mary of the Annunciation Church, where Carroll had previously stationed him as an assistant priest. Clorivière would take the place of the interim pastor, Robert Browne, who was to return to his congregation in Augusta, Georgia. The trustees of the church, which was predominantly Irish and harbored anti-French sentiment, opposed Clorivière.
  Browne defied Neale's order to return to Augusta, and Browne's predecessor at St. Mary's, Felix Simon Gallagher, asserted that Neale had no authority to appoint a new pastor without his ascent, and that to do so would be schismatic. Neale responded by withdrawing the priestly faculties of Gallagher and Browne on February 21, 1816. However, Browne ignored Neale's order, resuming the pastorate on March 28 and dismissing Clorivière.  With the congregation siding with Browne, Neale placed the church under an interdict. Browne then argued his case in Rome, where he obtained an order from Cardinal Lorenzo Litta, the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, allowing him to return as pastor. Neale appealed this decision to Pope Pius VII, who reversed Litta on July 6, 1817.
  Due to his declining health, Neale requested that the authorities in Rome appoint Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, the Bishop of Boston, as his coadjutor to assist him, but Cheverus objected. Instead, Ambrose Maréchal was appointed on July 24, 1817, but before he could receive notification of this, Neale died on June 18, 1817; Maréchal succeeded him as archbishop. He was buried in the crypt of the chapel at the Visitation Monastery.
caption: Neale as Archbishop of Baltimore
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