Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey in California
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey in California (Latin: Dioecesis Montereyensis in California) is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese in the United States of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in the Central Coast region of California. It comprises Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Cruz counties.
Diocese of Monterey in California Dioecesis Montereyensis in California | |
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Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo | |
Location | |
Country | United States |
Territory | Counties of Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Cruz, California, Region XI, United States |
Ecclesiastical province | Archdiocese of Los Angeles |
Statistics | |
Population - Total - Catholics | 1,040,498 208,100[1] (20.0%) |
Information | |
Denomination | Catholic |
Sui iuris church | Latin Church |
Rite | Roman Rite |
Established | April 27, 1840, reestablished October 6, 1967 |
Cathedral | Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo |
Patron saint | Our Lady of Bethlehem Saint Charles Borromeo |
Current leadership | |
Pope | Francis |
Bishop | Daniel E. Garcia |
Metropolitan Archbishop | José Gómez Archbishop of Los Angeles |
Bishops emeritus | Sylvester Donovan Ryan |
Map | |
Website | |
dioceseofmonterey.org |
The diocese is led by an ordinary bishop; the bishop's cathedra is located at the Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo, the mother church of the diocese, in Monterey, California. The diocese serves close to 200,000 Catholics in 46 parishes and 18 schools.
History
The history of the Catholic Church in Monterey began with the establishment on the shores of Monterey Bay of Mission San Carlos Borromeo in 1770 by Saint Junípero Serra, OFM. Father Serra moved the mission to Carmel the next year, which served as the headquarters of the chain of Spanish missions in California.
With the papal bull Apostolicam sollicitudinem of 27 April 1840, Pope Gregory XVI set up a new episcopal see, to which he gave the name of Diocese of California. He assigned to it a vast territory taken from that of the Diocese of Sonora, now the Archdiocese of Hermosillo in Mexico. It included Alta California (corresponding to the present-day states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming) and the Baja California Territory (the modern Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur). He set the episcopal residence at San Diego and made the diocese a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Mexico City.[2]
The first bishop of the diocese was Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno, OFM. Mission Santa Barbara served as the pro-cathedral.
In 1848 Alta California was ceded to the United States after the Mexican–American War, and the government of Mexico objected to a United States-based bishop having jurisdiction over parishes in Mexican Baja California. The Holy See divided the diocese into American and Mexican sections and, on 20 November 1849, with the episcopal residence moved to Monterey, a more central position for the new diocese, the American section became the Diocese of Monterey. The Royal Presidio Chapel in Monterey served as the pro-cathedral of the American diocese. In 1853 the diocese was split again, when Pope Pius IX created the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and Monterey was transferred to be a suffragan of the new archdiocese.
In 1859, the diocese's name was changed to the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles, due to the growth of the City of Los Angeles. The diocese was split in 1922 to form the Dioceses of Monterey-Fresno and Los Angeles-San Diego. In 1936 the diocese again changed metropolitan bishops, becoming a suffragan of the newly erected Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The latest territorial change for the diocese came in 1967, when it was split again, to form the present dioceses of Monterey and Fresno. The diocese remains as a suffragen diocese of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Bishops
The lists of Bishops and their years of service:
Bishop of the Two Californias
- Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno, OFM (1840–1846)
(Father José Maria González Rúbio, O.F.M. was administrator, 1846-1849.)
Bishop of Monterey
- Joseph Sadoc Alemany, OP (1850–1853), appointed Archbishop of San Francisco
- Thaddeus Amat y Brusi, CM (1853–1859)
Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles
- Thaddeus Amat y Brusi, CM (1859–1878)
- Francisco Mora y Borrell (1878–1896), created Archbishop (ad personam) upon retirement in 1896
- George Thomas Montgomery (1896–1902), appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of San Francisco
- Thomas James Conaty (1903–1915)
- John Joseph Cantwell (1917–1922), appointed Archbishop of Los Angeles
(Peter J. Muldoon was appointed 1917; did not take effect.)
Bishop of Monterey-Fresno
- John Bernard MacGinley (1924–1932)
- Philip George Scher (1933–1953)
- Aloysius Joseph Willinger, CSsR (1953–1967)
Bishop of Monterey in California
- Harry Anselm Clinch (1967–1982)
- Thaddeus Anthony Shubsda (1982–1991)
- Sylvester Donovan Ryan (1992–2006)
- Richard John Garcia (2007–2018)
- Daniel E. Garcia (2019–present)
(Gerald Eugene Wilkerson was apostolic administrator, 2018-2019.)
Other priests of this diocese who became Bishops
- Tod David Brown, appointed Bishop of Boise City in 1988
- Thomas Kiely Gorman, appointed Bishop of Reno in 1931
- Robert Emmet Lucey (priest here, 1916-1922), appointed Bishop of Amarillo in 1934
- Pedro Verdaguer y Prat, appointed Vicar Apostolic of Brownsville in 1890
Churches
The churches in the Diocese of Monterey include the Cathedral of San Carlos in Monterey (the oldest stone building and the first cathedral in California) and seven former Spanish Missions: Carmel Mission Basillica; Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad; Mission San Antonio de Padua; Mission San Juan Bautista; Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa; Mission San Miguel Arcangel; and Mission Santa Cruz.[3] A complete list of the churches in the diocese is found at List of churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey.
High schools
- Mission College Preparatory High School, San Luis Obispo
- Old Mission Elementary School, San Luis Obispo
- Notre Dame High School, Salinas
- Palma High School, Salinas
- Saint Francis Central Coast Catholic High School, Watsonville
- Santa Catalina School, Monterey
See also
- Catholic Church by country
- Catholic Church hierarchy
- List of the Catholic dioceses of the United States
Sources
- History article from the Diocese's website
- Catholic Schools of the Monterey Diocese
- Catholic-Hierarchy.Org datasheet
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey in California. |
References
- Diocese of Monterey in California
- The Papal Bull Apostolicam sollicitudinem, in Raffaele de Martinis, Iuris pontificii de propaganda fide. Pars prima, Tomus V, Romae 1890, pp. 233–235]
- "Parish map". Diocese of Monterey. Retrieved April 19, 2020.