BURLINGTON, DIOCESE of. - In the State of Vermont, so named by Samuel de Champlain, south of Canada.
In 1666 a Sulpician priest came from Montréal to celebrate Mass for French soldiers in the chapel of Fort St. Anne on Lamothe Island; two years later the bishop of Québec made the first episcopal visitation in New England. Subsequently Jesuit missionaries and others went forth to visit Catholic families and to convert the Indians living in Vermont. After Canada passed to England, the bishops of Québec continued to care for the Catholics of Vermont, who came under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Boston, erected in 1810. In 1815 the venerable p. de Matignon went to B., finding the population without priests or a church; in 1830 p. G. O'Callaghem was permanently sent there, and he built the church of St. Peter (1832). Pope Pius IX, following a petition from the bishops of the province of New York, created a diocese suffragan to Boston and established its see in B., which, out of a population of 362,000 inhabitants, has 97,963 Catholics, with 83 parishes, 123 diocesan priests, and 50 regulars (1948).