Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

Latin Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bostonmap
Remove ads

The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Boston (Latin: Archidiœcesis Metropolitae Bostoniensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in eastern Massachusetts in the United States. Its mother church is the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. The archdiocese is the fourth largest in the United States.[3]

Quick Facts Metropolitan Archdiocese of Boston Archidiœcesis Metropolitae Bostoniensis, Location ...

The Diocese of Boston was erected in 1808, branching off from the Diocese of Baltimore. It grew rapidly during the 19th century, due to waves of immigrants arriving in the region. Starting in 2002, the archdiocese faced a sexual abuse scandal which touched off investigations of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases throughout the United States.

Richard G. Henning has served as archbishop since October 31, 2024.

Remove ads

Territory

The Archdiocese of Boston encompasses Essex County, Middlesex County, Norfolk County, and Suffolk County in Massachusetts. It includes most of Plymouth County except for the towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham.

As of 2018, the archdiocese had 284 parishes with 617 diocesan priests and 275 permanent deacons. In 2018, the archdiocese estimated that more than 1.9 million Catholics lived within its territory.[2]

Remove ads

History

Summarize
Perspective

Early history

New England's first non-indigenous settlers in the 1600s came from England. They were Puritan Congregationalists and Baptists. Many of them left England because they were disappointed in the lack of reforms in the Church of England. They consisted of three groups:

  • Separatist Puritans who completely had split from the Church of England. They founded Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts in 1620.
  • Non-separating Puritans who sought to "purify" the Church of England. This group established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628.

Like the other British colonies, the Massachusetts colonies enacted legal restrictions on Catholics, Anglicans, Quakers, and other non-Puritan Protestants, as well as bans on Catholic worship. By 1700, the British Province of Massachusetts Bay had made it a crime, with a potential life sentence, for a Catholic priest to reside in the colony.[4]

With the start of the American Revolutionary War in 1776, the rebel leaders needed to gain the support Catholics for their cause. In addition, the alliance with Catholic France started shifting opinions in the colonies about Catholics. The Constitution of the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, written by future US President John Adams and ratified in 1780, established religious freedom for Catholics in the new state.[4] With the Massachusetts constitution being the first state constitution in the United States, its framework of government became a model for the constitutions of other states and, eventually, for the federal constitution.

In 1788, the Abbé de la Poterie, a former French naval chaplain serving in Boston, celebrated the city's first public mass in a converted Huguenot chapel at 24 School Street in Boston. It became Holy Cross Church, the first Catholic church in the Commonwealth. By 1800, two refugees from the French Revolution, Reverends Francis Anthony Matignon and John Cheverus, were ministering to the few Catholics in the region. They raised the funds to build a larger building, the Church of the Holy Cross. These buildings no longer exist, but they were the foundation of the Catholic Church in Massachusetts.[5]

Formation

Thumb
Portrait of Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus by Gilbert Stuart (1823)
Thumb
Bishop Fenwick (1846)

Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Boston on April 8, 1808, taking all of New England from the Diocese of Baltimore. The new diocese consisted of the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts (which included present-day Maine), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.[6] The pope named Cheverus as the first bishop of Boston.[7]

Cheverus supported the establishment in 1816 of the Provident Institution for Savings in Boston, the first chartered savings bank in the U.S. He believed the bank would help his parishioners establish good financial practices.[8]In 1820, Cheverus oversaw the opening of an Ursuline convent in the rectory of Holy Cross Cathedral with a girls school for poor children.[9]He was appointed in 1823 as bishop of Montauban in France.[10]

Monsignor Benedict Fenwick was appointed the second bishop of Boston by Pope Leo XII on May 10, 1825. Though the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese encompassed all of New England, Fenwick had only two priests under his charge, who served three Catholic churches, besides the cathedral, in all of New England: Saint Augustine's Chapel in Boston, St. Patrick's Church in Newcastle, Maine, and a small church in Claremont, New Hampshire.[11] Throughout New England, there were approximately 10,000 Catholics.[12]

Due to significant Irish immigration, the Catholic population in the diocese grew to at least 30,000 by 1833.[13] Fenwick traveled throughout the large territory to manage the diocese and administer the sacrament of confirmation.[14] This included visiting Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes in Maine,[15] who were largely Catholic,[16] and were the subject of intensive proselytism by Protestant evangelists. Fenwick ordered the construction of St. Anne's Church in Old Town, Maine, for them in 1828,[17] and sought to improve their schools.[15]

Fenwick addressed a shortage of priests in his diocese by sending prospective seminarians to Maryland and Canada to be educated, and by incardinating several priests from other dioceses.[18] He also trained several students in a makeshift seminary at his episcopal residence.[19] As a result, the number of priests in the diocese had increased to 24 by 1833.[18] At the same time, many new parishes were founded throughout New England.[20]

On August 10, 1834, posters were displayed in Charleston that declared an ultimatum: unless the Ursuline Convent and Academy of Mount Benedict were investigated by the board of selectmen of Charlestown, it would be "demolished" by the "Truckmen of Boston." The following day, authorities were sent to inspect the convent. As they left, a mob of 2,000, wearing masks or painted faces, encircled the convent. They threw bricks through the windows, stole precious objects from the interior, and then lit it ablaze; the nuns fled. The fire department arrived, but did not attempt to extinguish the fire. [21][22]

By the end of Fenwick's episcopate, the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Boston (after the removal of the Diocese of Hartford) had increased to 70,000, in addition to 37 priests, and 44 churches.[23]Fenwick died in 1846

More information Dioceses created out of the Diocese and Archdiocese of Boston, Date of diocese ...

Diocesan offices

In the 1920s, Cardinal William O'Connell moved the chancery from offices near Holy Cross Cathedral in the South End to 127 Lake Street in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston.[25] "Lake Street" was a metonym for the bishop and the office of the archdiocese.[25]

In June 2004, the archdiocese sold the archbishop's residence and the chancery and surrounding lands in Brighton to Boston College, in part to defray costs associated with numerous cases of sexual abuse by clergy of the archdiocese.[26] The archdiocesan offices of the archdiocese moved to Braintree. The archdiocesan seminary, Saint John's Seminary, remains on the property in Brighton.[27]

Clergy sexual abuse scandals and settlements

Thumb
Cardinal Law (2013)
Main article: Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

At the beginning of the 21st century the archdiocese was shaken by accusations of sexual abuse by clergy that culminated in the resignation of its archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, on December 13, 2002. In September 2003, the archdiocese settled over 500 abuse-related claims for $85 million.[28] Victims received an average of $92,000 each and the perpetrators included 140 priests and two others.[29]

Additional sex abuse allegations within the Archdiocese of Boston surfaced in later years as well. This included alleged abuse at Saint John's Seminary and Arlington Catholic High School.[30][31][32]

The Archdiocese of Boston lobbies against laws intended to help survivors of abuse, such as a proposed 2023 law to remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse lawsuits.[33] From 2011 and 2019 the Catholic church in Massachusetts spent over half a million dollars lobbying against such laws.[34]

Remove ads

Coat of arms

The coat of arms of the archdiocese, shown in the information box to the right at the top of this article, has a blue shield with a gold cross and a gold "trimount" over a silver and blue "Barry-wavy" at the base of the shield. The "trimount" of three coupreaux represents the City of Boston, the original name of which was Trimountaine in reference to the three hills on which the city's original settlement stood. The cross, fleurettée, honors the Cathedral of the Holy Cross while also serving as a reminder that the first bishop of Boston and other early ecclesiastics were natives of France. The "Barry-wavy" is a symbol of the sea, alluding to Boston's role as a major seaport whose first non-indigenous settlers came from across the sea.[35]

Communications media

The diocesan newspaper The Pilot has been published in Boston since 1829.

The archdiocese's Catholic Television Center, founded in 1955, produces programs and operates the cable television network CatholicTV. From 1964 to 1966, it owned and operated a broadcast television station under the call letters WIHS-TV.

Ecclesiastical province

Thumb
Ecclesiastical Province of Boston
Further information: List of Catholic bishops of the United States

The Archdiocese of Boston is also metropolitan see for the Ecclesiastical province of Boston. This means that the archbishop of Boston is the metropolitan for the province. The suffragan dioceses in the province are the Diocese of Burlington, Diocese of Fall River, Diocese of Manchester, Diocese of Portland, Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts, and the Diocese of Worcester.

Remove ads

Pastoral regions

The Archdiocese of Boston is divided into five pastoral regions, each headed by an episcopal vicar.

More information Pastoral region, Episcopal vicar ...
Remove ads

Bishops

Thumb
Bishop Fenwick (pre-1891)
Thumb
Cardinal Cushing (pre-1968)
Thumb
Cardinal O'Malley (2010)

Bishops of Boston

  1. Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus (1808–1823) appointed Bishop of Montauban and later Archbishop of Bordeaux (elevated to Cardinal in 1836)
  2. Benedict Joseph Fenwick (1825–1846)
  3. John Bernard Fitzpatrick (1846–1866; coadjutor bishop 1843–1846)
  4. John Joseph Williams (1866–1875; coadjutor bishop 1866); elevated to Archbishop

Archbishops of Boston

  1. John Joseph Williams (1875–1907)
  2. William Henry O'Connell (1907–1944)
  3. Richard James Cushing (1944–1970)
  4. Humberto Sousa Medeiros (1970–1983)
  5. Bernard Francis Law (1984–2002), resigned; later appointed Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
  6. Seán Patrick O'Malley (2003–2024)[a]
  7. Richard Henning (2024–present)

Current auxiliary bishops of Boston

Former auxiliary bishops of Boston

Other archdiocesan priests who became bishops

Remove ads

Churches

Main article: List of churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

Seminaries

Education

Summarize
Perspective
Thumb
Emmanuel College, Boston, Massachusetts (2011)
Thumb
Regis College, Weston, Massachusetts (2011)
Thumb
Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts (2018)

As of 2025, the archdiocese had 92 schools with approximately 32,000 students taught by 3,000 faculty members in pre-kindergarten through high school.[40]

In 1993, the archdiocese had 53,569 students in 195 schools. Boston had the largest number of parochial schools: 48 schools with 16,000 students.[41]

Superintendents

  • Albert W. Low (1961 – 1972)[42]
  • Bartholomew Varden (1972 – 1975)[42][43]
  • Eugene F. Sullivan (1978 – 1984)[44][45]
  • Kathleen Carr (1990 – 2006)[46]
  • Mary Grassa O'Neill (2008 – 2014)[47]
  • Mary E. Moran (2013 – 2014)[47]
  • Kathleen Powers Mears (2014 – 2019)[48][47]
  • Thomas W. Carroll (2019 – 2024)[49]
  • Eileen M. McLaughlin (2024 – present)[50]

Colleges and universities

Former colleges

Primary and secondary schools

See also: List of schools in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

High schools

More information School, Location ...

Former high schools

More information School, Location ...
Remove ads

Other facilities

The archdiocese previously used a headquarters facility in Brighton but sold it to Boston College in 2004 for $107,400,000.[73]Steward Health Care System operates the former archdiocesan hospitals of Caritas Christi Health Care.

Notes

  1. Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, OFM Cap., on August 5, 2024, and appointed Bishop Richard G. Henning of Providence, as his successor.[37] Henning was installed on October 31, 2024.

References

Sources

External links

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads