SANT'AGOSTINO (SAINT AUGUSTINE), DIOCESE OF. - A city and diocese in the State of Florida (U.S.A.).
The diocese today covers a territory of 46,959 square miles, with a total population of 2,734,116 inhabitants, of whom 72,000 are Catholics. It has 81 parishes with 111 diocesan priests and 78 regular clergy; 11 male religious communities with 73 religious (Redemptorists, Benedictines, Salesians, Jesuits, Josephites), and 52 female communities, a scholasticate (O.S.B.), a college, 6 hospitals, and 3 orphanages.
Philip II of Spain appointed Menéndez de Avilés governor of Florida in the 16th century. Upon landing in Florida, Menéndez built a fort and nearby established S. A., the first permanent city of Spanish Florida, in 1565. Florida had been discovered by Ponce de León in 1513. In his expedition, Menéndez had with him some secular priests but sought missionaries for the conversion of the natives. The priest Martín Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales was the first parish priest of S. A., the first parish in the United States. Menéndez obtained two Dominicans, and in 1566 St. Francis Borgia sent three Jesuits and ten in 1568; those who were not killed by the natives were recalled to Europe in 1572. They were succeeded by the Franciscans in 1577. Many of them were also killed, but in 1609 many natives in S. A. requested Baptism; thus began the golden age of the missions in Florida.
S. A. was first a parish of the diocese of Santiago de Cuba, and the first episcopal visit dates to 1606. Auxiliary bishops resided there from 1709 to 1710, from 1735 to 1745, and from 1751 to 1755.
When Florida was ceded to England in 1763, Catholics fled the territory. In 1787, Florida came under the jurisdiction of St. Christopher of Havana, and only in 1793 did Pius VI form the diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas with Bishop Luis Peñalver y Cardenà (resident in New Orleans) as its head. In 1806, the territory passed under the guidance of Baltimore until 1825, when the Holy See created the apostolic vicariate of Alabama and Florida. In 1850, the diocese of Savannah was established, including the part of Florida east of the Apalachicola River.
This area was elevated to an apostolic vicariate in 1875 and to the diocese of S. A. in 1870 by Pius IX. The first bishop was Bishop Augustin Verot, consecrated on April 25, 1858. Currently, Archbishop G. Hurley, regent of the Apostolic Nunciature in Belgrade, serves as its archbishop *ad personam*.