Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh
The Diocese of Raleigh is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church that covers the eastern half of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archbishop of Atlanta. On July 5, 2017, Pope Francis named Luis Rafael Zarama to be the 6th Bishop of Raleigh; Zarama was installed on August 29, 2017 at the recently consecrated Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral. History. Pope Pius IX erected the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina, taking the entire state of North Carolina from  the Diocese of Charleston and making it a suffragan of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore, on 03 March 1868. Benedictine monks from St. Vincent's Archabbey arrived in the western part of North Carolina acquired land, and started a new foundation in 1876. Pope Leo XIII elevated the priory to an abbey, known as Belmont Abbey, on 19 December 1884, whereupon the monks elected Father Leo Haid as their first abbot. On 4 February 1888, the same pope appointed the abbot also as Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina and titular Bishop of Messine, creating the unusual situation in which an  abbot possessed episcopal character when he subsequently received episcopal ordination on 1 July of that year. This arrangement became even more unusual when Pope Pius X designated Belmont Abbey as a territorial abbey, taking Gaston, Catawba, Cleveland, Burke, Lincoln, McDowell, Polk, and Rutherford Counties in western North Carolina -- the present territory of the Diocese of Charleston -- from the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina, making the territorial abbey a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, thus created two particular churches united in the person of their ordinary, "neither of which was a diocese". This arrangement endured until the death of Abbot /Bishop Haid on 24 July 1924. On 12 December 1924, Pope Pius XI elevated the Apostolic Vicariate of North Carolina to a diocese with the title of Diocese of Raleigh, making it the first Catholic diocese in the state of North Carolina. The "Catholic Hierarchy" web site indicates that Pope Pius XII transferred Catawba, Cleveland, Burke, Lincoln, McDowell, Polk, and Rutherford Counties from the territorial abbey to the Diocese of Raleigh on 17 April 1944 and that Pope John XXIII transferred Gaston County from the territorial abbey to the Diocese of Raleigh in July 1960, reducing the territory of the  territorial abbey to the grounds of the monastery. Nevertheless, its status as a territorial abbey continued and Abbot Walter Coggin of Belmont Abbey participated in the Second Vatican Council as an ordinary. On 10 February 1962, Pope John XXIII elevated the Diocese of Atlanta to a metropolitan see, transferring both the Diocese of Raleigh and Belmont Abbey, along with the Diocese of Savannah and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, to the new province. Pope Paul VI erected the Diocese of Charlotte, taking the territory of the Diocese of Raleigh that had previously been assigned to Belmont Abbey and making  it a suffragan of the Diocese of Atlanta, on 12 November 1971 (though the diocese did not formally come into being until the episcopal ordination and installation of Fr. Michael Begley, a priest in the Diocese of Raleigh, as the first bishop of the new diocese on 12 January 1972. This action restored the original (and present) configuration of the Diocese of Raleigh. The same pope subsequently transferred the remaining territory of Belmont Abbey and terminated the status of Belmont Abbey as a territorial abbey on 1 January 1977, establishing the present configuration of the Diocese of Charlotte. Cathedral churches . The bishop is seated at Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina. Construction on Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral commenced January 3, 2015. The cathedral was designed by O'Brien and Keane of Arlington, Virginia in the Romanesque Revival style, containing a cruciform floor plan with a dome over the crossing and 42 stained glass windows and Stations of the Cross from closed churches in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Beyer Studio of Philadelphia restored the windows before they were installed. Prior to Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Sacred Heart Cathedral served as the cathedral from 1924-2017. Since  the dedication of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral on July 26, 2017, the former Sacred Heart Cathedral has been relegated to a parish church. The Basilica Shrine of St. Mary, a minor basilica in Wilmington, served as a cathedral for the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina. The Former Pro-Cathedral of St. Thomas the Apostle in Wilmington was secularized. Sexual abuse. In June 2002 a man who was in theological formation in the Diocese of Raleigh claimed to have been sexually molested by Father Edward J. Shoback twenty-five years earlier in Pennsylvania. The Diocese of Raleigh terminated its relationship  with the alleged victim. In 2007 Justin David Scranton, an English teacher and cross country coach at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, admitted to acting inappropriately toward a student. The school suspended him during an investigation. He was arrested on February 28, 2007 on charges that he took indecent liberties with a female student. In March 2007 a group of protesters, some alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse, stood outside the offices for the Diocese of Raleigh, claiming that Bishop Michael Francis Burbidge refused to meet with them. Later that year the Diocese paid almost $2 million to  settle sexual misconduct claims made by thirty-seven people against at least fifteen priests since the 1950s. By September 2020, settlements which were paid by the Diocese of Raleigh in cases surrounding sexual misconduct claims since 1950 totaled $2,717,750. In July 2015 a three judge panel ruled to allow a lawsuit against the Diocese of Raleigh over an allegation of child sexual abuse by a priest to advance. The North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected arguments made by lawyers representing Bishop Burbidge and the Diocese that claimed allowing the lawsuit to advance into trial would violate the constitutional separation  of church and state. The case involved allegations of sexual abuse of a sixteen year old boy by Edgar Sepulveda, a Catholic priest of the Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús Mission in Beulaville, North Carolina. Sepulveda denied the accusations. Sepulveda had been arrested in 2010 and charged with second-degree sexual offense and sexual battery but the charges were dropped by Brunswick County prosecutors citing a lack of evidence. Bishop Burbidge put Sepulveda on administrative leave, prohibiting him from visiting any parish or Catholic school, and removed him from residence on church grounds. The lawsuit claimed that the bishop was  negligent and inflicted further emotional distress on the victim by refusing to order Sepulveda to undergo testing for sexually transmitted diseases and then share results with the victim's family. The church's lawyers denied that church officials had any knowledge of Sepulveda's alleged actions. In 2013 Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests criticized Bishop Burbidge and Bishop Peter J. Jugis of Charlotte for not warning families in their dioceses about Raymond P. Melville, a former Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse in Maine and in Maryland, who had moved to North Carolina. In August 2018 a grand  jury report regarding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania named two former North Carolina priests in the list of 301 priests guilty of sexual abuse. Fr. William Presley and Fr. Robert Spangenberg both worked in the Diocese of Raleigh in the 1970s and 1980s. Presley, whom the report describes as a "violent predator who insinuated himself into the lives of families for the purpose of getting close enough to their children that he could abuse them", had served at a parish in Kinston from 1981 until 1983 while Spangenberg served at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in  Newton Grove and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Clinton from 1977 until 1979. By May 2020, 29 Catholic clergy were listed on the Diocese of Raleigh's list of clergy who, as far back as 1950, had served in the Diocese of Raleigh and were "credibly accused" of committing acts of sex abuse. Those listed either had claims of abuse against them while serving in the Diocese of Raleigh or had reports of abuse elsewhere. Statistics and extent of the diocese. As per 2015, it pastorally served 231,230 Catholics (4.7% of 4,874,815 total) on 82,556 km² in 79 parishes and  5 missions with 162 priests (114 diocesan, 48 religious), 73 deacons, 90 lay religious (52 brothers, 38 sisters) and 29 seminarians. In 2010, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh contained seven Catholic centers on college campuses; 70 active diocesan priests and 49 active religious priests; 64 religious sisters; 47 religious men; 217,000 registered Catholics; and 240,000 unregistered Hispanics. Catholic education in the diocese. The Diocese of Raleigh currently has two high schools, as well as a lay-run high school and many lower schools. Of these include; Women religious. Women religious have made a contribution to the growth of the  Catholic Church in North Carolina. Sisters of Mercy from Charleston, South Carolina, moved to Wilmington in 1862 to care for victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic. In 1869, this same order of sisters opened the "Academy of the Incarnation" (now named St. Mary's School). These Sisters are also credited with opening schools in the western part of our state, including: St. Patrick School (Charlotte—1888), Sacred Heart Academy (Belmont—1892), and Sacred Heart School (Salisbury—1910). The Sisters of Mercy (Belmont) is the one community of women religious working in our state whose motherhouse is also located here. Both the orphanages in  Belmont, North Carolina, and Raleigh, North Carolina were staffed by the Sister of Mercy of North Carolina. The last five years of the Catholic Orphanage on Nazareth Street in Raleigh, North Carolina were served by the Sisters of Notre Dame, Chardon, Ohio. Other communities of women religious also answered the call to serve in North Carolina. The Religious of Christian Education opened St. Genevieve of the Pines Academy Asheville, in 1908. Equally prolific, the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, New York, staffed the Catholic School in Newton Grove in 1907, founded Sacred Heart Academy (now the Cathedral School and Cardinal Gibbons  High School) in Raleigh—1909, and began Immaculata School in Durham in 1909. In 1926, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, PA, staffed St. Joseph's School, New Bern, for "colored children." This school had been opened by Father Thomas Frederick Prince in 1887 and was staffed by lay people until the I.H.M. Sisters came. In 1927 they also founded schools serving black children in Goldsboro and Washington, North Carolina, as well as another New Bern school (St. Paul's) and a school in Raleigh (St. Monica's). Radio station. The diocese is the licensee for a  low power FM station, WSHP-LP, 103.3 MHz, located in Cary, North Carolina. Responsibility for this station's operation is primarily held by Divine Mercy Radio, Inc., a local lay apostolate organization.