Archdiocese of New York


The Archdiocese of New York is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church located in the State of New York. It encompasses the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island in New York City and the counties of Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester to the north of the city. It does not include the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn or Queens, which form the Diocese of Brooklyn nor north of the Hudson Valley; however, the Diocese of Brooklyn is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of New York.
The Archdiocese of New York is the second-largest diocese in the United States by population, encompassing 296 parishes that serve around 2.8 million Catholics, in addition to hundreds of Catholic schools, hospitals and charities. The archdiocese also operates St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York. The archbishop is also the metropolitan of the larger Ecclesiastical Province of New York.
The Good Newsroom is the digital news outlet of the archdiocese and includes a website, social media channels, an app, and a weekly e-newsletter.
R. Luke Concanen was appointed the first bishop of what was then the Diocese of New York in 1808. On December 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV named Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, to succeed the retiring archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Since 1911 every archbishop of the archdiocese has been elevated to the College of Cardinals, although such elevation is often deferred for a number of years.

Prelature

The ordinary of the Archdiocese of New York is an archbishop whose cathedral is the Cathedral of St. Patrick in Manhattan, New York. The archdiocese is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province of New York, which includes the following suffragan dioceses:
The ecclesiastical province includes all of New York State, except for Fishers Island which is part of the Province of Hartford. As such, the metropolitan archbishop possesses certain limited authority over the suffragan sees of the province.

History

1784 to 1808

On November 26, 1784, Pope Pius VI erected the Apostolic Prefecture of the United States, creating a separate jurisdiction for the new United States from the Catholic Church of the United Kingdom. That same year, the new State of New York repealed the Colonial-era law prohibiting Catholic priests from residing in New York.
With the anti-priest law repealed, the French consul, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, organized a group of laymen in 1785 to open St. Peter's Parish in Manhattan, the first Catholic parish in New York City. The congregation purchased land for a new church from Trinity Church, supplement community donations with a gift of 1,000 silver pieces from King Charles III of Spain. The St. Peter's Church was dedicated in 1787; its worshippers included Sister Elizabeth Ann Seton and the philanthropist Pierre Toussaint. In 1800, the congregation opened a school at St. Peter's, the first Catholic school in New York.
On November 6, 1789, Pius VI raised the Apostolic Prefecture of United States to the Diocese of Baltimore, headed by the first American bishop, John Carroll. For the next nine years, Carroll was in charge of the Catholic Church in New York State along with the rest of the nation. The second Catholic church in New York State, and the first outside of New York City, was St. Mary's Church in Albany, New York, founded in 1796.

1808 to 1820

On April 8, 1808, Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of New York and three other dioceses, taking their territory from the Diocese of Baltimore. He simultaneously elevated the Diocese of Baltimore to a metropolitan archdiocese and assigned all four new sees as its suffragans. At the time of its formation, the Diocese of New York included:
Pius VII appointed Monsignor R. Luke Concanen, then serving in Rome, as the first bishop of New York. However, he was prevented from sailing to New York by a French blockade. On Carroll's recommendation, Concanen appointed Anthony Kohlmann, rector of St. Peter's Parish, to administer the diocese as his vicar general. Kohlman traveled extensively throughout the new diocese, celebrating masses and providing sacraments to individuals. To relieve overcrowding at St. Peter's, Kohlman started construction in 1809 of the original Cathedral of St. Patrick in Lower Manhattan. He also established the New York Literary Institution, the first Catholic school in the new diocese. Concanen died in Italy in 1810, having never made it to the United States.
On October 4, 1814, John Connolly was appointed the second bishop of New York by Pius VII. When Connolly arrived in New York, the diocese had four priests and three churches: St. Peter's and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, and St. Mary's in Albany. The Catholic population of the diocese was approximately 15,000, primarily Irish with some English, French and Germans.
In 1817, Connolly invited the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland, to open the first Catholic orphanage in New York City. During his tenure, Connolly traveled over 1,000 miles on horseback through the diocese. He spent a great deal of time ministering to Irish immigrants building the Erie Canal in Upstate New York. The first parish in Utica, St. John's, was erected in 1819. In 1823, St. Patrick's Parish was founded in Rochester, the first in that city. Connolly died on February 6, 1825.

1825 to 1840

To replace Connolly, Pope Leo XII in 1826 named John Dubois as the next bishop of New York. At the time of his consecration, the diocese had 18 priests, 12 churches and a Catholic population of 150,000. Dubois faced a primarily Irish Catholic population that was not happy over the Vatican appointing a French bishop. Desperately needing a seminary to prepare more priests, Dubois spent two years in Europe trying to raise funds. Back in New York, Dubois built his first seminary in Nyack in 1833, but it burned down the next year. He later opened another seminary in Lafargeville in northern New York. He also fought a long battle with the trustees of the first St. Patrick's Cathedral over administration of that facility.
In 1837, at Dubois' request, Pope Gregory XVI appointed John J. Hughes as coadjutor bishop of New York to assist the ailing bishop. Unlike previous Catholic leaders in New York, Hughes did not try to build bonds with Protestant leaders and was very willing to fight for what he deemed as the rights of Catholics.
In 1840, Hughes started a campaign to persuade the Public School Society, which ran the public schools in New York City, to allocated seven schools for Catholic students and teachers. Hughes argued Catholics students in the existing schools were being forced to hear readings from the Protestant King James Bible. When the Society refused, he started lobbying the State of New York to subsidize Catholic schools.
In 1841, Hughes founded St. John's College in the Bronx. Later to become Fordham University, St. John's was the first Catholic institution of higher learning in the Northeastern United States. Realizing that the Lafargeville seminary was too distant, Hughes that same year moved it to the new St. John's campus. Despite Hughes' lobbying, the New York State Legislature passed the Maclay Act in 1842, which prohibited public funding of religious schools.

1840 to 1850

When Dubois died in 1842, Hughes automatically succeeded him as bishop of New York. Having lost the legal battle over public funding of Catholic schools, Hughes worked to establish a Catholic political party. One of his other priorities was to address parish debts and loosen the control of boards of trustees over these parishes. Hughes decided to found an independent Catholic school system in the city, staffed by members of religious orders. During his tenure as bishop, he opened over 24 schools. By 1870, 19 percent of the city's children were attending Catholic schools.
The difficulties faced by Catholics at the time included anti-Catholic bigotry in general and in the New York school system and a strong Nativist movement that failed to keep Catholics out of the country but warned that control by "the Papacy" was a threat to American republicanism.
On April 23, 1847, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Albany and the Diocese of Buffalo. This left the Diocese of New York with the following areas:
On July 19, 1850, Pius IX elevated the Diocese of New York to an archdiocese, making Hughes the first archbishop of New York. On July 29, 1853, to address the burgeoning Catholic population in New York and New Jersey, Pius IX created two new American dioceses:
At this point, the new archdiocese consisted of New York City, Richmond County and Bronx Counties, and the seven counties north of the city. In 1858, Hughes laid the cornerstone for the present St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
In July 1863, during the American Civil War, Hughes used his influence to help stop the Draft Riots in Lower Manhattan. They were started by Irish working men as a protest against conscription into the Union Army, but devolved into race riots that killed 119 African-Americans and resulted in the burning of many buildings. Very ill at the time, Hughes appeared on his balcony to address several thousand people, urging them to be peaceful and loyal to the United States. Other priests in Manhattan confronted mobs, stopping their rampages. Hughes died on January 3, 1864.
To replace Hughes, Pope Pius IX named Bishop John McCloskey in January 1865 as the second archbishop of New York. When the original St. Patrick's Cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1866, he rebuilt it in two years. McCloskey presided over the dedication of the present Patrick's Cathedral in 1879. In October 1880, Pope Leo XIII named Bishop Michael Corrigan as coadjutor archbishop to assist the aged McCloskey.
In response to the growing Catholic population in New York, McCloskey established 88 new parishes, including the first parish for African-Americans along with new parishes for the Polish and Italian communities. The number of priests rose from 150 to 400 during his tenure. At the time of McCloskey's death in 1885, there were 37,000 children enrolled at archdiocesan schools. He also established several charitable societies for children and a hospital for the mentally ill.
On July 25, 1885, Pope Leo XIII transferred the Bahamas to the Archdiocese of New York. The shipping connections between New York City and the islands made it easy for the archdiocese to administer them.