Pioneer Bishops of Florida

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Florida up to 1900.  For more information about Florida, see my blog of September 4, 2017.

The Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, was the first European to come to Florida in 1513 and he named the land in honor of a Spanish Easter festival, Pascua Florida.  Other explorers followed until the Spanish established St. Augustine in 1565, making it the oldest European settlement in the United States.  Franciscan missionaries, some of whom lost their lives in the effort, were able to bring the Faith to the Native American people with some success, especially among the Timucua and Calusa tribes.  [A catechism and grammar were written in the Timucua language in the early 1600s—the first books of any kind written in a Native American language.]  By the mid-17th Century, the Franciscans served close to 30,000 converts at almost 40 missions.

Spanish settlements came under frequent attacks by Native Americans, the French, and especially the English.  An English raid on the missions in 1702 resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Native American Catholics and the enslavement of hundreds more.  Spain was forced to cede Florida to England in 1763 and most Florida Catholics left, including the few hundred remaining Native American Catholics.  England divided the colony in two, East Florida being modern-day Florida as far west as the Apalachicola River, and West Florida extending along the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River (including parts of modern-day Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana).  Spain regained control of both Floridas in 1783.  West Florida became part of the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase, although there was legal confusion about this until 1810.  Spain, England, and the United States fought over East Florida during and after the War of 1812 until Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819.  The Territory of Florida was created in 1822 and Florida became the 27th State in 1845.

Cuban bishops originally were in charge of the Spanish churches in Florida and in 1606, Bishop Cabeza de Altamirano of Santiago, Cuba, visited St. Augustine—the first Catholic bishop to visit what is now the United States.  Three auxiliary bishops from the Diocese of Santiago resided for periods of time in the 18th Century in St. Augustine—the first resident bishops in what is now the United States.  By the time Florida became a Territory, there were only about 600 Catholics living there.  Florida came under the jurisdiction of several U.S. bishops until 1857, when what used to be East Florida became the Vicariate Apostolic of Florida—a missionary diocese.  The 10 westernmost counties of Florida were part of the Diocese of Mobile, Alabama.  In 1857 there were six churches in Vicariate Apostolic—two in St. Augustine, and one each in Tallahassee, Key West, Jacksonville, and Palatka.  There were also churches in Pensacola and Apalachicola under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Mobile.

Pope Pius IX raised the Vicariate of Florida to the status of a diocese when he created the Diocese of St. Augustine in 1870.  St. Augustine had fewer than 2,000 people at the time—Jacksonville’s 6,000 people made it the largest municipality in Florida—but it had served as the capital of Spanish Florida and of English East Florida and had long been a center for Florida Catholicism.  In 1958, Pope Pius XII established southern Florida as the Diocese of Miami, which was then the largest city in Florida.  Florida’s population increased from 2.8 million in 1950 to 6.8 million in 1970.  In recognition of this growth, Pope Paul VI, in 1968, created the Province of Miami (making Miami an archdiocese), created the Dioceses of St. Petersburg and Orlando.  Pope Paul established the Diocese of Pensacola and Tallahassee in 1975 to served Catholics in the Panhandle.  Finally, Pope John Paul II created the southern Florida Dioceses of Palm Beach and Venice in 1984.

Augustin Verot was born in France in 1805 and ordained a Sulpician priest in 1828.  He came to Baltimore in 1830 and served as a pastor and seminary professor until being appointed the first Vicar Apostolic of Florida in 1857.  He served as vicar apostolic until 1870.  He also served as Bishop of Savannah, Georgia, from 1861 to 1870.  He was named the first Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida in 1870.  

When Verot first came to Florida in 1856, he found 3,000 Catholics, half of whom lived in St. Augustine.  There were six churches and three priests.  He invited religious orders to open schools for white children, as well as African-American children.  By 1870, when he became the first Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida had 8,000 Catholics served by eight priests.  Verot, no longer young, made annual visits, often on horseback, to each church and school in the Diocese, which included most of Florida.  He was an early booster of Florida and its temperate climate.  He died in 1876.

John Moore was born in Ireland in 1835 and moved with his family to Charleston, South Carolina, when he was 14.  He attended seminary in Charleston, France, and Rome, and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Charleston in 1860.  He served in several parishes in the Diocese until 1877 when he was appointed the second Bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine, which then included all of Florida.

Bishop Moore recruited priests and nuns from his native Ireland to help him minister to Florida’s Catholics.  He also invited the Benedictines to administer three parishes near the Gulf Coast.  The Benedictines soon established St. Leo’s Abbey and University—the first Catholic college in Florida.  The Jesuits were invited (after several local priests died of yellow fever) to minister to Catholics in South Florida and they eventually administered six parishes and dozens of missions.  He continued Bishop Verot’s ministry to African-Americans and required annual reports from each parish.  He died in 1901 after suffering a stroke.