Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte
The Diocese of Charlotte (Dioecesis Carolinana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in the Southern United States. It consists of 46 counties in western North Carolina, divided into ten vicariates. The city of Charlotte and the Piedmont Triad are the largest metropolitan areas in the diocese. Charlotte is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Atlanta. The Diocese of Charlotte is led by a bishop who serves as pastor of the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in Charlotte. Peter Jugis is the current bishop. The diocese is also home  to two of the three basilicas in North Carolina: The total population of the Diocese of Charlotte in 2010 was approximately 4.8 million people. Of this number, 174,689 were registered Catholics (3.6% of the total population), living in over 63,000 households. This number does not include an estimated 230,000 undocumented Hispanic or Latino Catholics. The Diocese pf Charlotte covers , and includes 46 counties. It encompasses three main population centers: Vicarates. The Diocese of Charlotte has ten vicariates. They are Albemarle, Asheville, Boone, Gastonia, Greensboro, Hickory, Mecklenburg, Salisbury, Smoky Mountain and Winston-Salem. History. Vicariate Apostolic and Belmont Abbey. Pope Pius  IX erected the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina on March 3, 1868. He removed the entire state of North Carolina from the Diocese of Charleston in South Carolina. The pope made new vicariate a suffragan of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore in Maryland. In 1876, Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, sent a party of Benedictine monks to Western North Carolina. They bought land outside of Charlotte and started a new priory. Eight years later, Pope Leo XIII elevated the priory to an abbey, known as Belmont Abbey, on December 19, 1884. At that time, the monks elected Father Leo  Haid as their first abbot. On February 4, 1888, Pope Leo XIII appointed Haid to also serve as apostolic vicar of North Carolina and titular bishop of Messine. Haid was consecrated in Baltimore on July 1, 1888. Pope Pius X later designated Belmont Abbey as a territorial abbey. He transferred eight counties in Western North Carolina (which today make up the Diocese of Charlotte) from the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina to Belmont Abbey. This made Belmont a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. This decision created two particular churches united in the person of their ordinary, "neither of which  was a diocese". This arrangement endured until Haid's death on July 24, 1924. Diocese of Raleigh. On December 12, 1924, Pope Pius XI transformed the Apostolic Vicariate of North Carolina into the Diocese of Raleigh. It became the first Catholic diocese in the state. Twenty years later, Pope Pius XII transferred seven counties from Belmont Abbey to the new diocese on April 17, 1944. Pope John XXIII then transferred Gaston County from Belmont to the diocese in July 1960. These two transfers reduced the Belmont territory to the abbey grounds. However, Belmont still remained a territorial abbey; Abbot Walter  Coggin remained an ordinary and participated in the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's . On February 10, 1962, Pope John XXIII elevated the Diocese of Atlanta to a metropolitan archdiocese. He transferred the Dioceses of Raleigh and Savannah, along with Belmont Abbey, from the Archdiocese of Baltimore to the new province headquartered in Atlanta. Diocese of Charlotte. Pope Paul VI erected the Diocese of Charlotte on November 12, 1971. The new diocese, composed of territory taken from the Diocese of Raleigh, was made a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Six years later, Pope Paul VI finally transferred  Belmont Abbey into the Diocese of Charlotte, ending its status as a territorial abbey on January 1, 1977. When the new diocese was established, the Catholic population of the area was just over 34,000. The first bishop of the new Diocese of Charlotte was Michael Begley, a priest from the Diocese of Raleigh, installed on January 12, 1972. Begley served as bishop until his retirement in May 1984. Pope John Paul II appointed John Donoghue, a priest from the Archdiocese of Washington, as the second bishop of Charlotte on November 5, 1984, with his installation on December 18, 1984. The  population of Catholics in Charlotte continued to grow, and Bishop Donoghue declared in the early 1990's that it would be the "Decade of Evangelization". Donoghue was succeeded by William G. Curlin, an auxiliary bishop from the Archdiocese of Washington, on April 13, 1994. Curlin served until his retirement on September 10, 2002. By 2002, the diocese had grown to approximately 87,000 Catholics. On August 1, 2003, Pope John Paul II appointed Peter J. Jugis, judicial vicar of the Diocese of Charlotte, as its fourth bishop. He was consecrated on October 24, 2003. As of April 2022, Jugis is still  Bishop of Charlotte. Sexual abuse cases. On November 1, 2019, the North Carolina House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation extending the statute of limitations for filing sex abuse lawsuits. While the state of North Carolina has no statute of limitations for criminal sex abuse cases, there still are statute of limitations in place for civil sex abuse lawsuits. On December 30, 2019, Bishop Jugis released a list of 14 priests credibly accused of sexual abuse in the diocese since 1972. On March 2, 2020, the diocese added two more names to this list. This list did not include clergy  accused of sexual abuse in territory controlled by the diocese prior to 1972; these men were named in a list titled "Western North Carolina." Former clergy who served in the diocese, but were accused of committing sex abuse "elsewhere", were listed separately as well. Yurgel case. In 2009, Robert Yurgel, a former priest at St. Matthew's Parish, was arrested after pleading guilty to second-degree sexual offense of a minor. Yurgel had sexually abused a 14 year-old altar boy in 1999. In February 2009, Yurgel pleaded guilty to child molestation and was sentenced to seven years in state  prison. He was dismissed from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and laicized in 2000. The victim sued Yurgel and the Diocese of Charlotte. The case was settled for $1 million in damages and an additional $40,000 to pay for the victim's therapy. Yurgel was released from prison in August 2016. On December 14, 2020, a California man filed a lawsuit against the diocese, claiming that Robert Yurgel had sexually abused him when he was five to seven years old at St. Mathew's Parish in the late 1990's. Spangenberg case. On August 14, 2018, a  grand jury report released by the Pennsylvania attorney general named 301 priests responsible for allegedly abusing over 1,000 children within six Pennsylvania dioceses over 70 years. One of them was Robert Spangenberg, a Spiritan priest who served in the Dioceses of Charlotte and Raleigh. Spangenberg was a pastor at St. James Parish in Hamlet, North Carolina, in the 1990s. David Hains, diocese spokesperson, stated that the Diocese of Charlotte never received any concerns from Congregation of the Holy Spirit about Spangenberg's behavior in Pennsylvania, and that there had been no complaints about him in North Carolina. West case. On  March 25, 2019, the diocese announced that Monsignor Mauricio West, its vicar general and chancellor, had resigned from his posts. The diocese had received allegations against West of unwanted sexual advances towards an adult student at Belmont Abbey College in the 1980's. Taking a leave of absence, West denied all the accusations. The Lay Review Board of the diocese found these allegations to be credible. In November 2019, four more complaints of sexual misconduct were lodged against West. Two of the accusations came from diocese employees, the other two from Belmont students. Kelleher and Farwell cases. On April 14 , 2020, two sex abuse lawsuits were filed against the diocese. The plaintiffs alleged that the diocese shielded two credibly accused priests, Richard Farwell and Joseph Kelleher. The lawsuits were filed previously, but both were dismissed due to the previous statute of limitations. The plaintiffs were able to sue again because of the 2019 changes to state law. Baker case. In November 2021, the diocese was sued by man who claimed he had been sexually assaulted by Donald Baker, a diocese priest, in the 1980's. The plaintiff had made his accusation to the diocese in 2017. Baker left the ministry  in 1994 and is on the list of diocese priests with credible accusations of sexual abuse of minors. Older Mass form. In December 2007, 14 priests of the diocese attended a five-day workshop on the 1962 version of the Mass, the legitimacy of whose continued public use in certain circumstances was recognized in July of that year. Father Samuel Weber OSB was the first to offer a regularly scheduled Mass in that form in the Diocese of Charlotte since 1969. He celebrated this version in October 2007 at Davis Chapel of Wake Forest University. Bishop Jugis noted that it  would take some time, but that the diocese was trying to accommodate those with an attachment to this form of mass. On the following January 13, the Tridentine Latin Mass or "usus antiquor" (older form) was celebrated for the first time in nearly 40 years at Our Lady Of Grace Church in Greensboro, with Jugis attending. Catholic News Herald. Catholic News Herald is the official publication of the diocese. It has the slogan "Serving Christ and Connecting Catholics in Western North Carolina." It publishes news from the diocese, general Catholic and world news with a Catholic perspective. The newspaper was  established in 1991 and publishes 26 issues per year. It also carries a regular supplement in Spanish within the publication. This publication should be differentiated from the British publication "Catholic Herald".