SANT'AGOSTINO (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 religious; 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, and 3 orphanages.
Philip II of Spain appointed Menéndez de Aviles governor of Florida in the sixteenth century. After landing in Florida, Menéndez built a fort and nearby founded S. A., the first permanent city of Spanish Florida, in 1565. Florida had been discovered by Ponce de León in 1513. Menéndez had several secular priests with him on his expedition, but he was seeking missionaries for the conversion of the indigenous peoples. The priest Martín Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales was the first pastor 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 indigenous peoples were recalled to Europe in 1572. The Franciscans succeeded them in 1577. Many of them, too, were killed, but in 1609 several indigenous people in S. A. asked for Baptism; thus began the golden age of the missions of Florida.
S. A. was initially a parish of the diocese of Santiago de Cuba, and the first visit by the bishop dates from 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, the Catholics fled the territory. In 1787 Florida came under the jurisdiction of S. Christopher of Havana, and only in 1793 did Pius VI establish the diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas, with Msgr. Luis Peñaler y Cardena (residing in New Orleans) as bishop. In 1806 the territory came under the authority of Baltimore until 1825, when the Holy See created the apostolic vicariate of Alabama and Florida. In 1850 the diocese of Savannah was established and also included the part of Florida east of the Apalachicola River.
This part was raised to an apostolic vicariate in 1875 and to the diocese of S. A. 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 in a personal capacity.