Burlington, Diocese of. — In the State of Vermont, so named by Samuel de Champlain, south of Canada.
In 1666 a Sulpician priest came from Montreal to celebrate Mass for French soldiers in the chapel of Fort St. Anne on Lamothe Island; two years later the Bishop of Quebec made the first episcopal visitation to New England. Subsequently, Jesuit missionaries and others ventured to visit Catholic families and to convert the Indians residing in Vermont. After Canada passed to England, the Bishops of Quebec continued to care for the Catholics of Vermont, who then came under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Boston, erected in 1810. In 1815 the Venerable Fr. de Matignon went to Burlington, finding the population without priests or a church; in 1830 the Rev. J. O’Callaghan was sent there permanently and built St. Peter’s Church (1832). Pope Pius IX, at the request of the bishops of the Province of New York, erected a diocese suffragan to Boston with its see in Burlington, which, in a population of 362,000, counted 97,963 Catholics, with 83 parishes, 123 diocesan priests, and 50 regular clergy (1948).