John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore)


John Carroll was an American Catholic prelate who served as the first Bishop of Baltimore, then the only diocese in the nascent United States, from 1789 to 1815. He became the first Archbishop of Baltimore in 1808, up to which point Carroll had also administered the entire U.S. Catholic Church.
Born to an aristocratic family in the colonial-era Province of Maryland, Carroll spent most of his early years as a priest in Europe, teaching and serving as a chaplain. After returning to Maryland in 1773, he started organizing the Catholic Church in America with a small cadre of priests. The Vatican appointed him to several roles as leader of the American Catholic hierarchy, culminating in his appointment as archbishop.
Carroll founded Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and St. John the Evangelist Parish in Silver Spring, Maryland, the first secular parish in the country.

Early life and education

Carroll was born on January 8, 1735, in Upper Marlborough, Maryland, in the colonial-era Province of Maryland, to Daniel Carroll I and Eleanor Darnall Carroll at the noble Carroll family plantation. John Carroll grew up on the plantation.
John Carroll was home-schooled by Eleanor Carroll, then sent to a Catholic school in Bohemia Manor, Maryland. As the Province of Maryland did not allow Catholic education, the school was run secretly by the Jesuit Reverend Thomas Poulton. When Carroll reached age 13, his family sent him and his cousin Charles to the College of St. Omer in the Artois region of France. The school was a popular destination for the education of boys from wealthy Catholic families in Maryland.

Jesuit

Carroll joined the Society of Jesus as a postulant at age 18 in 1753. In 1755, he began his studies of philosophy and theology at a Jesuit seminary in Liège, Belgium.
On February 14, 1761, Carroll was ordained to the priesthood in Liège by Bishop Pierre Louis Jacquet. Carroll was formally professed as a Jesuit in 1771. Carroll remained in Europe until he was almost 40, teaching at St Omer and in Liège. He also served as chaplain to a British aristocrat traveling in Europe.
When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773, Carroll returned to the family plantation in Maryland. The suppression of the Jesuits was a painful experience for Carroll; he suspected that the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith was responsible for it. Since the laws of Maryland prohibited the establishment of a Catholic parish, Carroll worked as a missionary in both Maryland and the Province of Virginia. In 1774, he built a small chapel on the plantation called St. John the Evangelist.
In 1776, the Continental Congress asked Charles Carroll, attorney Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin to travel to the British Province of Canada on a diplomatic mission. Charles persuaded his cousin John to join the delegation. The goal of the mission was to persuade the French population of the province to ally themselves with the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution.
However, the mission to Canada was a failure; the American delegation could not win any support there. Jean-Olivier Briand, the bishop of Quebec, banned his priests from meeting with Carroll and the rest of the mission. When Franklin became sick, Carroll escorted him back from Montreal to Philadelphia. Carroll then returned to the family plantation, performing ministerial duties during the war years.

Superior of the missions

During the colonial period, the Catholic clergy in the Thirteen American colonies were under the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicariate of the London District in England. After the American Revolution, anti-British sentiment in the new United States made it important to change that jurisdiction. When Bishop Richard Challoner, the most recent vicar-apostolic, died in 1781, his successor, Bishop James Talbot, refused to exercise jurisdiction in the United States. The Vatican had to come up with a new arrangement.
The end of the American Revolution marked the loosening of anti-Catholic sentiment and laws in the United States. Beginning on June 27, 1783, Carroll held a series of meetings at White Marsh Manor in Bowie, Maryland. These meetings started the formation of the American Catholic Church. That same year, Carroll and several supporters began fundraising for an Academy of Georgetown for educating Maryland Catholics.
Regarding the leadership of the American church, the Maryland priests felt it was too soon to have an American bishop. The papal nuncio in France, Cardinal Giuseppe Doria Pamphili, then asked Benjamin Franklin, at that point in Paris as American Minister to the French court, for advice on the matter. Franklin responded that the separation of church and state did not permit the U.S. government officially to indicate a preference. Privately, Franklin suggested that the Vatican could put a French bishop in charge of the American church, but also expressed his admiration for Carroll's abilities.
On June 9, 1784, Pope Pius VI appointed Carroll as provisional superior of the missions for the United States, with the power to celebrate the sacrament of confirmation. The Vatican reportedly appointed Carroll to please Franklin.

Reforms

Financial reform and lay involvement

Unlike in other countries, Catholicism was not regulated by government in the new United States. With little contact with the Vatican and no American hierarchy, local parishes were setting their own standards and practices. Some communities created churches administered by laity without Carroll's permission. Other parishes were controlled exclusively by their clergy.
Through his meetings with the clergy, Carroll sought to build a church structure that accepted the need for lay involvement while providing a reasonable degree of hierarchical control.

Early ecumenical efforts

Carroll frequently published articles refuting anti-Catholic slanders and misinformation. He also fought proposals to establish a Protestant denomination as a state religion. However, Carroll always treated non-Catholics with respect and said that Catholics and Protestants should work together. Carroll suggested that the chief obstacles to Christian unity were the lack of clarity by the Vatican on the boundaries of papal primacy and the use of Latin in the Catholic liturgy.

Apostolic prefect of the United States

After the end of the American Revolution, on November 26, 1784, the Vatican established the Apostolic Prefecture of the United States, naming Carroll as its prefect apostolic.
In a February 1785 letter to Cardinal Leonardo Antonelli, Carroll reported on the status of the Catholic Church in Maryland, which had the largest Catholic population in the United States. He said that despite having only 19 priests in Maryland, some of the more prominent families in the state were still observant Catholics. He did mention that some of these Catholics enjoyed dancing and novel-reading. Carroll also urged the Vatican to allow American clergy a voice in appointing their first bishop, to ease their fears of Vatican control.
Pope Pius VI granted Carroll's request "that the priests in Maryland be allowed to suggest two or three names from which the Pope would choose their bishop". The pope also designated Baltimore as the first see for an American diocese, again at the priests' request. The Maryland clergy, by a vote of 24 to 1 in April 1789, recommended that the Vatican appoint Carroll as the first bishop of Baltimore.

Bishop of Baltimore

On November 6, 1789, Pius VI appointed Carroll as bishop of Baltimore. He was consecrated in England by Bishop Charles Walmesley. He was assisted by the Reverends Charles Plowden and James Porter, on August 15, 1790, in the chapel of Lulworth Castle in Dorset. Returning to the United States, Carroll was invested as bishop at St. Thomas Manor Church in Charles County, Maryland. When it was established, the Diocese of Baltimore had jurisdiction over what is today the area of the United States east of the Mississippi River.
Carroll selected the Church of St. Peter in Baltimore to serve as his pro-cathedral. Constructed in 1770, St. Peter was the first Catholic church in Baltimore. The pro-cathedral was the site of the first synod of American priests and deacons in 1791. It also hosted the first ordination of a priest and the first consecration of a bishop in the United States.
In March 1790, Carroll sent a message of congratulations, along with a blessing, to the newly elected president, George Washington, on behalf of all American Catholics. In 1795, at Carroll's request, the Vatican appointed the Reverend Leonard Neale as a coadjutor bishop in Baltimore to assist him.
In 1804, the Vatican gave Carroll jurisdiction over the Catholic Church in the Danish West Indies. In 1805, the Louisiana Territory was added. Carroll was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in July 1815.

Founding of Georgetown University

Since 1783, Carroll had been striving to build a Catholic institution to train American priests and educate Catholic lay people, both men and women. Construction of Georgetown College started in 1788 in the Village of Georgetown in the newly established District of Columbia. With the ending of the Jesuit suppression, the order was able to administer the new college. Georgetown College opened on November 22, 1791 The Bishop John Carroll statue is located at the university.

First diocesan synod

In 1791, Carroll convened a synod in Baltimore, the first diocesan synod in American history. It was attended by 21 priests. The agenda items included:
The synod decrees represent the first local canonical legislation in the new nation. One decree dictation that parishes divide their income into one third to support their clergy, one third to maintain their churches and the remainder to aid the poor.