Pioneer Bishops of California

This blog will discuss bishops that served in California up to 1900.  For more information about California, see my blogs of February 16, 2018, and May 4, 2018.

Several Spanish explorers were aware of California by the middle decades of the 16th Century and Jesuits were active in Lower California (Mexico’s Baja peninsula) from 1697 to 1767, but no serious attempt at colonization of Upper California (now the State of California) was made until the 18th Century.  Spain, fearful that the English or Russians might attempt to colonize Upper California, sent the Spanish military and Franciscan priests to establish a Spanish presence there.  The military built forts and the Franciscans, led by Father Junipero Serra, established missions to bring the Faith to the Native Americans.  (Father Serra was canonized by Pope Francis in 2015.)  The first mission was at San Diego in 1769 and the second was at Carmel in 1770.  Nineteen others would follow.

California became part of the newly formed Republic of Mexico in 1821 and Monterey was made the provincial capital.  Americans had long coveted California and a few had settled there by the 1840s.  The United States and Mexico fought a war between 1846 and 1848 and as a result, the United States gained a territory that included California and all or part of six other states.  Gold was discovered in California in January 1848—one month before the Mexican War ended.  About 80,000 men, mostly Americans, came to California the next year looking to get rich.  California became the 31st State in 1850.  

Most early Californians were Catholic and California became part of the Diocese of Sonora (Mexico) in 1779.  Pope Gregory XVI established the Mexican Diocese of Two Californias (Upper and Lower) in 1840.  With Statehood in 1850, Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of Monterey, although the Diocese included the Mexican Lower California until 1852.  Northern California became the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1853.  

The southern diocese was renamed the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles in 1859.  Pope Pius XI split this diocese in 1922 forming the Diocese of Monterey-Fresno and the Diocese of Los Angeles-San Diego.  Pius XI created the Province of Los Angeles in 1936 which raised Los Angeles to an Archdiocese and at the same time created a separate Diocese of San Diego.  Pope Paul VI separated Monterey and Fresno into separate dioceses in 1967 and in 1976 separated Orange County from the Archdiocese creating the Diocese of Orange.  One month before his death in 1978, Pope Paul took half of the Diocese of San Diego and created the Diocese of San Bernardino.

In northern California, Pius IX established the Vicariate Apostolic of Marysville in 1861, which became the Diocese of Grass Valley in 1868 and the Diocese of Sacramento in 1886.  With increased population growth in the region, Pope John XXIII created three new Northern California dioceses in 1962—Oakland, Stockton, and Santa Rosa.  Pope John Paul II created the Diocese of San Jose in 1981.

Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno was born in Mexico in 1785, became a Franciscan in 1801, and was ordained a Franciscan priest in 1808.  He worked as a missionary in Mexico until he was sent to what is now California.  He arrived in Monterey in 1833 and took charge of the missions in California and Texas.  Father Diego was appointed the first Bishop of Two Californias in 1840.  

His Diocese consisted of what is now the State of California, the Mexican Baja Peninsula, and extended east to the Colorado River.  He initially established his See in San Diego before moving to Santa Barbara.  Bishop Diego y Moreno faced a shortage of funding for the Diocese—the Mexican government cut off its funding in 1842 and many of the Spanish settlers did not contribute to the Diocese.  He was never able to establish a reliable source of funding for the Diocese.  He also faced a shortage of priests.  There were 17 Franciscan priests, but most were old or infirm.  Diego established a seminary, but it only produced three priests.  Bishop Diego was able to visit all the churches in the Diocese before he died of tuberculosis in 1846.  

Father Gonzalez Rubio administered the Diocese after the death of Bishop Diego y Moreno.  Pope Pius IX changed the name of the diocese in 1849 to the Diocese of Monterey.  

Joseph S. Alemany was born in what is now Spain in 1814.  He was ordained a Dominican priest in Rome in 1837.  The Dominicans sent him to Tennessee in 1841 and he was named Prior Provincial of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph (which now covers the northeastern United States) in 1848.  He was appointed Bishop of Monterey, California, in 1850.  Alemeny successfully petitioned the Vatican to separate the Mexican territory of Baja California from his diocese (in 1852) and to split California into two dioceses (in 1853).  He also began legal action against the Mexican government to recover the Pious Fund—a trust fund that had been set up to fund mission activities in California.  (The legal issues were not resolved until 1967.)  He also brought in French and Irish priests to serve in the Diocese as well as Dominican sisters.

Alemeny was appointed the first Archbishop of San Francisco in 1853.  Archbishop Alemany was initially responsible for an Archdiocese that included all of Northern California, Nevada, Utah, and part of Colorado.  As Archbishop, he attended the First Vatican Council in Rome in 1869-70 and the historic Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884.  He built the first St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1854 and established an Archdiocesan newspaper.  He continued his legal action against the Mexican government to recover the Pious Fund.  When Alemany first arrived in San Francisco in 1853, there were only three Catholic churches in the city.  As immigrants from Mexico, Ireland, Germany, France, and Italy came to the Archdiocese, Alemany built schools, colleges, hospitals, and institutions for the poor and needy, often recruiting religious orders to administer them.  When Alemany retired in 1884 after serving as Archbishop for 31 years, there were over 150 churches and chapels in the Archdiocese with 160 priests to serve 400,000 Catholics.  Archbishop Alemany returned to his native Spain after his retirement.  He died in 1888.  His body was returned to San Francisco in 1965.

Thaddeus Amat y Brusi was born in Spain in 1811 and ordained a Vincentian priest in Paris in 1837.  The Vincentians sent him to serve as a missionary in the United States.  Amat was serving as rector of the seminary in Philadelphia when, in 1853, Pope Pius IX appointed him Bishop of Monterey, California.  Amat chose to live in Santa Barbara and seeing that Los Angeles was growing faster than Monterey, moved to Los Angeles in 1859.  The name of the Diocese changed to Monterey-Los Angeles the same year.

Bishop Amat faced the daunting task of governing a diocese that included all of southern California with only 16 priests and few financial resources.  He found some success with obtaining both priests and funding from Europe.  He met resistance from his mostly Hispanic followers in his attempt to Americanize Catholicism and he disputed the ownership of the California missions (which had recently been returned to the Church by President Lincoln) with the Franciscans.  He built St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in Los Angeles in 1876 (which is no longer the Cathedral) and wrote a widely used catechism on matrimony.  He invited the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to establish schools in the Diocese and invited the Vincentians to open what is now Loyola Marymount University.  Bishop Amat died in 1878.

Note:  the Americanization movement in the U.S. church in the late 1800s is a complicated subject.  I invite you to go online to learn more about it.  Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, who I discussed earlier, was a leader in the Americanist movement.  The movement sought to bring Catholicism in line with American concepts, such as religious liberty, separation of church and state, cooperation with non-Catholics, and lay participation in ecclesiastical decision-making.  These ideas were anathema to many bishops in Europe, where Church and State were often combined.

Francis Mora y Borrell was born near Barcelona, Spain, in 1827.  Eventually he came to California and was ordained a priest by Bishop Amat in 1856.  He served in several rural parishes until 1863 when he became pastor in Los Angeles.  By this time he had become vicar general of the Diocese and in 1873 was appointed coadjutor bishop.  Mora became Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles in 1878 upon the death of Bishop Amat.

Bishop Mora established 72 parishes in the Diocese to keep up with population growth, especially caused by the immigration of European Catholics due to the railroad, oil, and citrus industries. He also established the Diocese’s first Catholic newspaper and brought in religious orders to establish schools and homes for orphans and the elderly.  He successfully litigated to protect the rights of the Church and to recover property wrongfully appropriated.  Bishop Mora resigned in 1896 due to poor health brought about by a carriage accident and died in Barcelona in 1905.

George T. Montgomery was born in Kentucky in 1847 and ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1879.  His first cousin was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  He was also related to aviation pioneer John J. Montgomery.  Montgomery was named coadjutor bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles in 1894 and became Bishop upon the resignation of Bishop Mora in 1896. 

Bishop Montgomery was the first American-born Bishop of the Diocese.  When he became Bishop, the Diocese had 52,000 Catholics in 72 parishes and missions.  He built more churches, schools, and charitable institutions to keep up with the increasing number of Catholics coming to the area.  The influx of Catholics was not welcomed by anti-Catholic groups such as the American Protective Association, but Montgomery countered this with groups that promoted tolerance.  He was a capable church and civic leader.  Montgomery was appointed coadjutor archbishop of San Francisco in 1903.  Montgomery was expected to succeed Archbishop George Riordan, but Montgomery died in 1907, seven years before Riordan died.  Montgomery served with great distinction, especially during and after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Patrick W. Riordan was born in Canada in 1841 and moved with his family to Chicago when he was seven.  He graduated from Notre Dame in 1858 and attended seminary in Europe.  He was ordained a priest in 1865 for the Diocese of Chicago.  He became a seminary professor in Chicago and later a pastor before being named coadjutor archbishop of San Francisco in 1883.  Riordan became Archbishop upon the retirement of Archbishop Alemany in 1884.

Riordan successfully concluded the Archdiocese’s case against the Mexican government concerning the Pious Fund, although it would take decades for settlement to be completely repaid.  He built the second St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1891, St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park in 1898, and he replaced many wooden churches with brick and stone buildings.  He also was successful in amending California’s constitution to make church buildings tax exempt.  Riordan promoted Catholic education, in part because public schools at the time used anti-Catholic textbooks, and he supported the rights of workers.  His greatest challenge was the devastating earthquake of 1906.  The earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed or damaged 12 churches and many other Catholic buildings.  Riordan reopened 11 of the churches within two years.  Overall, Riordan more than doubled the number of parishes and more than tripled the number of priests serving the Archdiocese.  Riordan was fluent in six languages, which endeared him to immigrant Catholics. Archbishop Riordan died of pneumonia in 1914.

Eugene O’Connell was born in Ireland in 1815 and ordained a priest there in 1842.  He came to San Francisco in 1851 and served in parishes there (where he learned Spanish) until he returned to Ireland in 1854 to be a seminary dean.  In 1860, O’Connell reluctantly accepted the assignment as first Vicar Apostolic of Marysville, California, telling Pope Pius IX that he was being “condemned to the mines.”  He had six priests serving six parishes in Northern California, Nevada, and Utah.  He recruited priests from Ireland (some of whom he found were drunks or otherwise unsatisfactory).  Seven years later, there were enough Catholics to justify the creation of the Diocese of Grass Valley, California, and O’Connell became its first Bishop, even though he continued to live in Marysville.  The new Diocese had 15 parishes (11 in California and 4 in Nevada) served by 19 priests.  O’Connell attended to First Vatican Council in 1870.  Bishop O’Connell retired in 1884 and died in 1891.

Patrick Manogue succeeded Bishop O’Connell.  Manogue was born in Ireland in 1831 but left there at the age of 18 and came to the United States looking to support his family back in Ireland.  He eventually came west and went to California to mine gold and to Nevada to mine silver.  He earned enough money in four years as a miner, to not only support his family, but to enroll in seminaries in Chicago and Paris and travel throughout Europe.  After his ordination in Paris in 1861, he was assigned to St. Mary’s Church in Virginia City, Nevada, where he served for 20 years and befriended miners who eventually became very wealthy.  Manogue was appointed coadjutor bishop of Grass Valley in 1881 and became bishop upon the retirement of Bishop O’Connell in 1884.  Two years later, Pope Leo XIII suppressed the Diocese of Grass Valley in favor of the new Diocese of Sacramento and Manogue became its first bishop.  Manogue used his knowledge of European cathedrals and his friendships with wealthy miners to build the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.  He built many other churches, schools, hospitals, and other Catholic institutions as well.  He converted many Native Americans to the Faith.  Although he was well educated—he read French, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, as well as English—he never forgot that he grew up poor and worked to see that the needs of the poor were met.  Bishop Manogue died in 1895.

Thomas Grace was born in Ireland in 1841 and was ordained a priest in 1876 for the American missions.  He served at parishes in California and Nevada before becoming pastor of the pro-cathedral in Sacramento.  Grace was appointed Bishop of Sacramento in 1896.  Bishop Grace governed the Diocese during a time of growth.  The number of Catholics rose from 25,000 to 55,000 as immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and other European countries came to Northern California.  Bishop Grace traveled throughout his vast diocese to strengthen the Faith of these diverse Catholics.  He tried to provide churches for these different ethnic groups despite difficult financial times.  He established lay organizations and a diocesan newspaper.  He also established the first day-care center in California in 1920.  Bishop Grace died in 1921.