Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore


The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore is the premier see of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The archdiocese comprises the City of Baltimore and 9 of Maryland's 23 counties in the central and western portions of the state: Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Howard, and Washington. The archdiocese is the metropolitan see of the larger regional Ecclesiastical Province of Baltimore. The Archdiocese of Washington was originally part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore is the oldest diocese in the United States whose see city was entirely within the nation's boundaries when the United States declared its independence in 1776. The Holy See granted the Archbishop of Baltimore the right of precedence in the nation at liturgies, meetings, and Plenary Councils on August 15, 1859. Although the Archdiocese of Baltimore does not enjoy "primatial" status, it is the premier episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States of America, as "prerogative of place".
Within the archdiocese are 518,000 Catholics, 145 parishes, 545 priests, 159 permanent deacons, 55 brothers, 803 sisters, 205 lay extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, five hospitals, 28 aged homes, 7 diocesan/parish high schools, 13 private high schools, and 4 Catholic colleges/universities.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has two major seminaries: St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore and Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg.
This archdiocese was featured in the Netflix documentary The Keepers exposing the sexual abuse history at Archbishop Keough High School and the murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik in 1969. It was revealed in late 2016 that the Archdiocese of Baltimore had paid off numerous settlements since 2011 for abuse victims.

History

Before and during the American Revolutionary War, the Catholics in Great Britain's thirteen colonies in America were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of the London District, in England. After the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783, ended the war, Maryland clergy delivered a petition to the Holy See, on November 6, 1783, for permission for the missionaries in the United States to nominate a superior who would have some of the powers of a bishop. In response, Pope Pius VI on June 6, 1784, confirmed Father John Carroll, who had been selected by his brother priests, as Superior of the Missions in the newly independent thirteen United States of North America, with power to give the sacrament of confirmation. This act established a hierarchy in the United States and removed the Catholic Church in the U.S. from the authority of the Vicar Apostolic of the London District.
The Holy See then established the Apostolic Prefecture of the United States on November 26, 1784. Because Maryland was one of the few regions of the colonial United States with a substantial Roman Catholic population, the apostolic prefecture was elevated to become the Diocese of Baltimore—the first diocese in the United States—on November 6, 1789. In 1790, Father Carroll traveled to England where he was ordained and consecrated as a bishop in Lulworth Castle in Dorset, by Bishop Charles Walmesley, O.S.B. The first American-born Catholic priest, William Matthews, was ordained by Carroll at St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral in the Diocese of Baltimore in 1800.
On April 8, 1808, Pope Pius VII erected the suffragan dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown in Bardstown, Kentucky, which moved in 1841 to the larger city of Louisville, from the territory of the Diocese of Baltimore and simultaneously raised it to the rank of metropolitan archdiocese, thereby making it the "Archdiocese of Baltimore". The newly established "Province of Baltimore"—whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore—comprised all of the states and territories of the nation.
The archdiocese again lost territory in following decades with the creation of the Diocese of Richmond on July 11, 1820; and the Diocese of Wilmington on March 3, 1868. In between, a part of the District of Columbia had been retroceded to Virginia in 1846, so in 1850 that new piece of Virginia was transferred to the Diocese of Richmond.
On July 22, 1939, the City of Washington was erected as a separate archdiocese. The archbishop of Baltimore, Michael J. Curley, was simultaneously named the first archbishop of the new Archdiocese of Washington and continued to administer the two archdioceses as a single unit — in persona episcopi. The see was temporarily renamed the Archdiocese of Baltimore-Washington, in recognition of the nation's capital. Eight years later, on November 15, 1947, Patrick A. O'Boyle was appointed the second archbishop — and first residential archbishop — of the Archdiocese of Washington, which consequently began to function as a separate diocese. Therefore, the territory of the "new" archdiocese — consisting of the District of Columbia and the two Washington suburban and three southern counties of Maryland — were permanently separated from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which was thus reduced to its current extent and resumed its previous name.
From 1808 until 1847, Baltimore was the only archdiocese in the United States and therefore the entire country was one ecclesiastical province. As the nation's population grew and waves of Catholic immigrants arrived, the Holy See continued to erect new dioceses and elevate certain others to the status of metropolitan archdioceses, which simultaneously became metropolitan sees of new ecclesiastical provinces. Thus, the Province of Baltimore gradually became smaller and smaller. In 1846, the Diocese of Oregon City, now Portland, Oregon was raised to an archdiocese. Following in 1847, the then Diocese of Saint Louis was elevated to an archdiocese and metropolitan see of the new Province of Saint Louis. Also in 1850, the Diocese of New York was raised to an archdiocese. In 1875, the dioceses of Boston and Philadelphia were likewise elevated.
The archdiocese began to publish its diocesan newspaper, The Baltimore Catholic Review since 1913 as the successor to the earlier diocesan publication The Catholic Mirror, published 1833 to 1908. The name has since been shortened to The Catholic Review. In 2012, it changed from weekly to biweekly issues and in December 2015, it transformed again to a monthly magazine.

Plenary Councils of Baltimore

The Plenary Councils of Baltimore were three national meetings of Catholic bishops in the United States in 1852, 1866 and 1884 in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 2016 the Archdiocese of Baltimore confirmed that settlements had been paid to past students of Seton Keough High School who were sexual abused by Father A. Joseph Maskell, a priest at the school from 1967 to 1975. In January 1970, a popular English and drama teacher at Archbishop Keough, Sister Cathy Cesnik, was found murdered in the outskirts of the city of Baltimore. Her murder was never solved and is the topic of a true crime documentary The Keepers that was released on Netflix on May 19, 2017. Maskell, who died in 2001, was long fingered as a lead suspect in her murder. Though never formally charged, the Archdiocese of Baltimore settled with 16 of Maskell's possible victims for a total of $472,000 by 2017.
A report released by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro on August 14, 2018, singled out Bishop and future Cardinal William Keeler for transferring abusive Pennsylvania priest Father Arthur Long from the Diocese of Harrisburg to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. On August 15, 2018, one day after the Pennsylvania report was published, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced that a pre K-8 Catholic school scheduled to be opened in 2018 and named for Keeler would no longer bear his name. Despite a denial from Long's religious order and the Archdiocese of Baltimore that Long abused children while serving the Archdiocese of Baltimore, a leaked church memo written in 1995, the year Long was removed from ministry, revealed that accusations of "inappropriate behavior" had surfaced against Long in 1991 and 1992 during his time in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the Pennsylvania report noted that Keeler was notified of accusations of Long sexually abusing children when he was serving as Bishop of Harrisburg in 1987. Long died in 2004.
In March 2019, Archbishop Lori banned accused former Archdiocese of Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Gordon Bennett from practicing any form of ministry in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the suffragan Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston. In April 2019, the Archdiocese of Baltimore added the names of 23 deceased clergy to a list of accused clergy which the Archdiocese published in 2002. Long, a Jesuit, was among those added to the list.

Episcopate

"Prerogative of Place"

The Archdiocese of Baltimore is led by the Archbishop of Baltimore and a corps of auxiliary bishops who assist in the administration of the archdiocese as part of a larger curia. Sixteen men have served as Archbishop of Baltimore; the current archbishop is William E. Lori.
In 1858, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Pius IX, conferred "Prerogative of Place" on the Archdiocese of Baltimore. This decree gives the archbishop of Baltimore precedence over all other archbishops of the United States in councils, gatherings, and meetings of whatever kind of the hierarchy, regardless of the seniority of other archbishops in promotion or ordination.

Co-cathedrals

The archbishop is concurrently the pastor of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland in north Baltimore and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The older cathedral is located on Cathedral Hill above downtown, near the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood. Both are called co-cathedrals. The archbishop appoints a rector for each of the co-cathedrals. The basilica, built in 1806–1821, is the first cathedral constructed in the United States. It is considered the mother church of the United States. During the time from the first bishop John Carroll's installation in 1790 to the dedication of the old Baltimore Cathedral in 1821, the bishop's throne was at St. Peter's Church. It was located two blocks south on the northwestern corner of North Charles Street and West Saratoga Street, serving as the pro-cathedral with its attached rectory, school and surrounding cemetery. Old St. Peter's was across the street from the "Mother Church of the Anglican Church" in Baltimore, Old St. Paul's Church, with four successive buildings at the site beginning in 1730 at the southeast corner of Charles and Saratoga streets in downtown overlooking the harbor. St. Peter's Roman Catholic parish was razed in 1841.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore is one of only five United States dioceses that have two churches serving as cathedrals in the same city, the others being the Diocese of Honolulu; the Diocese of Burlington, the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska. Other dioceses with two cathedrals have them in separate cities.

Bishops

Archbishops of Baltimore

The list of archbishops and their terms of service:
  1. John Carroll, raised from Bishop to Archbishop in 1808
  2. Leonard Neale
  3. Ambrose Maréchal
  4. James Whitfield
  5. Samuel Eccleston
  6. Francis Patrick Kenrick
  7. Martin John Spalding
  8. James Roosevelt Bayley
  9. James Gibbons
  10. Michael Joseph Curley
  11. Francis Patrick Keough
  12. Lawrence Shehan
  13. William Donald Borders
  14. William Henry Keeler
  15. Edwin Frederick O'Brien, appointed Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre
  16. William Edward Lori

    Coadjutor bishops

  1. Alfred Allen Paul Curtis, previously appointed Bishop of Wilmington
  2. Owen Patrick Bernard Corrigan
  3. Thomas Joseph Shahan
  4. John Michael McNamara, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Washington
  5. Lawrence Joseph Shehan, appointed Bishop of Bridgeport ; future Cardinal
  6. Jerome Aloysius Daugherty Sebastian
  7. Thomas Austin Murphy
  8. Thomas Joseph Mardaga, appointed Bishop of Wilmington
  9. Francis Joseph Gossman, appointed Bishop of Raleigh
  10. Philip Francis Murphy
  11. James Francis Stafford, appointed Bishop of Memphis and later Archbishop of Denver, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary
  12. William Clifford Newman
  13. John Ricard, appointed Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee
  14. Gordon Dunlap Bennett, appointed Bishop of Mandeville
  15. William Francis Malooly, appointed Bishop of Wilmington
  16. Mitchell T. Rozanski, appointed Bishop of Springfield in Massachusetts
  17. Denis J. Madden
  18. Mark E. Brennan, appointed Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston
  19. Adam J. Parker
  20. Bruce Lewandowski

    Other affiliated bishops

The following men began their service as priests in Baltimore before being appointed bishops elsewhere:

High schools