Saint Augustine, Diocese of

SAINT AUGUSTINE, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in the State of Florida (U.S.A.).

The diocese today covers a territory of 46,959 sq. 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 regulars; 11 male religious communities with 73 religious (Redemptorists, Benedictines, Salesians, Jesuits, Josephites) and 52 female communities, 1 school (O.S.B.), 1 college, 6 hospitals, 3 orphanages.

Philip II of Spain appointed Menéndez de Aviles governor of Florida in the 16th century. Having landed in Florida, Menéndez built a fort and nearby established St. Augustine, the first permanent city of Spanish Florida, in 1565. Florida had been discovered by Ponce de León in 1513. On his expedition Menéndez had with him some secular priests, but he was seeking missionaries for the conversion of the natives. The priest Martín Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales was the first pastor of St. Augustine, 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 likewise killed, but in 1609 several natives at St. Augustine asked for Baptism; thus began the golden age for the missions of Florida.

St. Augustine was at first a parish of the diocese of Santiago de Cuba, and the bishop's first visit dates back to 1606. Auxiliary bishops stayed there from 1709 to 1710, from 1735 to 1745, from 1751 to 1755.

When Florida was ceded to England in 1763, the Catholics fled from the territory. In 1787 Florida passed under the jurisdiction of St. Christopher of Havana, and only in 1793 did Pius VI form the diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas with Msgr. Luis Peñaler y Cardena (resident in New Orleans) as bishop. 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 formed and also included the part of Florida east of the Apalachicola River.

This part was elevated to an apostolic vicariate in 1875 and to the diocese of St. Augustine in 1870, by Pius X. The first bishop was Msgr. Agostino Verot, consecrated on 25 April 1858. At present Msgr. G. Hurley, regent of the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade, is its archbishop ad personam.

Gastone Carrière