Diocese of Biloxi


The Diocese of Biloxi is a diocese of the Catholic Church that encompasses 17 counties in southern Mississippi in the United States. The diocese was erected in 1977. It is a suffragan diocese of the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Mobile. The Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biloxi is the diocesan cathedral.
WWW biloxidiocese.org

Territory

The Diocese of Biloxi encompasses the counties of Covington, Forrest, George, Greene, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Lamar, Lawrence, Marion, Pearl River, Perry, Stone, Walthall, and Wayne in southern Mississippi.

Demographics

As of 2023, the Catholic population of the diocese was 54,520, which represented 6.6% of the total population of 831,202. 77 priests, 51 permanent deacons, 28 male religious and 17 female religious serve the diocese.

History

1600 to 1841

The first Catholic priests in Mississippi were French Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries who accompanied the La Salle, Marquette, and d'Iberville expeditions in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1787, three priests, Fathers McKenna, White, and Savage, arrived in Natchez from Spain and erected three missions in the vicinity. These missions disappeared after the Spanish Empire ceded the area to the new United States in the early 19th century.
The Mississippi Territory was originally under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. In 1826, Pope Leo XII moved the new state of Mississippi into the Vicariate Apostolic of Mississippi. The pope named Bishop Louis-Guillaume-Valentin DuBourg as the vicar apostolic. In 1837, Pope Gregory XV elevated the vicariate to the Diocese of Natchez, encompassing all of Mississippi. The Biloxi area would remain part of this diocese, succeeded by the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson, for the next 140 years.

1841 to 1977

When Bishop John J. Chanche of Natchez visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1841, there were no Catholic churches or schools anywhere in the state. The first Catholic church in Biloxi, Nativity Blessed Virgin Mary, was constructed in 1843. St. Stanislaus College, a boarding school for boys, was established in 1854 in Bay St. Louis by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.
Missionary priests established a small chapel in Pascagoula in 1859. The first Catholic high school in Biloxi, Sacred Heart Academy, opened in 1875. Resurrection Catholic School was started in Pascagoula in 1882 in by the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. In 1898, the first Catholic church in Gulfport, St. James, was dedicated. Sacred Heart School was founded in 1900 in Hattiesburg by the Sisters of Mercy. St. John High School in Gulfport opened in 1900.

1977 to present

Pope Paul VI erected the Diocese of Biloxi, with territory taken from the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson on March 1, 1977. The pope appointed Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Lawson Howze of Natchez-Jackson as the first bishop of Biloxi. He became the first African-American to be appointed a Catholic bishop in the 20th century.
In 1980, Pope John Paul II elevated the Diocese of Mobile to a metropolitan archdiocese and designated the Diocese of Biloxi as a suffragan of the new metropolitan see. Howze retired in 2001 after 24 years as bishop of Biloxi.
Thomas John Rodi of New Orleans was made the next bishop of Biloxi in 2001. Rodi served in Biloxi until 2008, when he was named archbishop of Mobile.
Auxiliary Bishop Roger Morin of New Orleans was named the third bishop of Biloxi by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. In 2016, Morin resigned.
As of 2023, the bishop of the Diocese of Biloxi is Louis Kihneman III from the Diocese of Corpus Christi. He was appointed in 2016.

Bishops

Bishops of Biloxi

  1. Joseph Lawson Howze
  2. Thomas John Rodi, appointed Archbishop of Mobile
  3. Roger Morin
  4. Louis Frederick Kihneman

Other diocesan priest who became bishop

Education

As of 2025, the Diocese of Biloxi has eight elementary schools, four three 7-12 schools and two K-12 schools

Grades 7 to 12 schools

Grades K-12 schools

Sexual abuse

Several diocesan priests have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct involving minors. These cases go back to the founding of the diocese in 1977. Bishop Kihneman acknowledged five of these names as credibly accused of sexual misconduct of minors in 2019, but recognized that this was a “small, belated step forward.”