Most Rev. John Carroll | Archdiocese of Baltimore

On June 9, 1784, John Carroll was appointed supervisor of the United States Catholic Missions. An excerpt from the article:

"Creating a Church
In Maryland Carroll resided with his mother at Rock Creek, where his brother Daniel built a chapel for him to serve the Catholics of the neighborhood. In 1776 he was asked by the Continental Congress to accompany a mission to Canada consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and his cousin Charles Carroll. Though he questioned the propriety of a minister of religion being involved in political affairs and entertained small hope of winning over the Canadians, he felt it his patriotic duty to go. Snubbed by the local clergy on the orders of the bishop of Quebec, Carroll took an early opportunity to accompany the ailing Franklin back to Philadelphia.

Carroll’s sympathies were with the revolutionary cause, which he saw as favorable to the future of the Church in the new nation. With independence ratified by treaty in 1783, he wrote jubilantly to an official in Rome that “our Religious system has undergone a revolution, if possible, more extraordinary, than our political one.” It was “a blessing and advantage, which is our duty to preserve & improve with the utmost prudence” (80-81). When a cousin, Charles Henry Wharton, wrote a work to justify his conversion to the Protestant Episcopal Church suggesting that Roman Catholicism was inimical to a free society, Carroll felt compelled to publish in 1785 a 115-page rebuttal, An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America, his most ambitious literary effort. In it he argues that “America may come to exhibit a proof to the world, by general and equal toleration, by giving a free circulation to fair argument, is the most effectual method to bring all denominations of Christians to an unity of faith” (140). At this point in his career Carroll also favored a liturgy in the language of the people and a recognition of papal power as extending only to spiritual matters. In 1785 he fought a bill that would have laid a tax for the support of clergymen in Maryland. To at least two American newspapers he sent essays demanding equal rights for Roman Catholics.

With independence Carroll realized something must be done for the support of the clergy, almost all former Jesuits, and the protection of their properties. In the face of the apathy and irresolution of his former colleagues, he took the initiative in 1783 by calling several priests to White Marsh, Maryland, where a constitution was framed from a plan he had outlined. It provided for a chapter of the clergy elected from three districts. To the chapter, which would meet regularly, would be entrusted the former Jesuit properties and responsibility for the conduct of the clergy in temporal matters. Only then did the ex-Jesuits petition the Holy See to grant the necessary spiritual faculties to their former superior, Fr. John Lewis. Rome meanwhile, through the French foreign minister, approached the American representative in Paris. When told that the Holy See was free to make any arrangement for the new nation it wishes, Congress having nothing to do with religion, the pope, at Franklin’s recommendation, named Carroll instead of Lewis “Superior of the Mission in the thirteen United States” on June 9,1784.

Not wishing to be under the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide, which was charged with missionary territories, Carroll informed the cardinal prefect, Leonardo Antonelli. That it would be impolitic to create for the new nation a vicar apostolic directly under this curial congregation. When the time was right, he insisted, the United States should have a diocesan bishop chosen by its own clergy. A compromise that was something of an anomaly would eventually be worked out: the American clergy would, for the first time only, be allowed to elect their bishop. But this diocesan bishop would be under the Congregation of the Propaganda. Troubles in New York and Philadelphia, plus the antics of wandering priests, soon convinced Carroll and the chapter that a bishop was needed. Carroll was elected almost unanimously. On November 6, 1789, by the pontifical brief Ex hac apostolicae, Baltimore, where Carroll had lived since 1786, was made the first diocese of the United States with Carroll its bishop. On August 15, 1790, he was raised to the episcopacy in the chapel of the Weld family, Lulworth Castle, Dorset, England, where his friend Charles Plowden was chaplain, by Bishop Charles Walmesley, vicar apostolic of the Western District."