Pioneer Bishops of Vermont

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Vermont up to 1900.  For more information about Vermont, see my blog of September 27, 2017.

A party led by the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, were the first Europeans to see what is now Lake Champlain and the State of Vermont in 1609.  The French did not begin colonization until they built Fort Sainte Anne on Isle la Motte in Lake Champlain in 1666.  The first British settlement was made near Vernon in 1690.  For much of the late 17th and early 18th Centuries, the French and British fought for control of Vermont.  This ended with the British conquest of Quebec in 1760.  Bennington was settled in 1761 under the first of several charters granted by New Hampshire.  New York also granted charters for settlements resulting in Vermont declaring itself an independent nation in 1777.  Vermont became the 14th State in 1791.

The French built a chapel at Fort Sainte Anne and the first Mass in Vermont was celebrated there in 1666.  French Jesuit missionaries established several missions near Lake Champlain in the late 17th Century, including one at Swanton.  One Jesuit, Jacques Frémin, converted 10,000 Native Americans to the Faith.  Most Catholics left Vermont after it fell under British control in 1760, and when Father Francois Matignon visited Vermont in 1815, he found only about 100 Catholics.  Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston (Vermont became part of the Diocese of Boston in 1808) sent Father Jeremiah O'Callaghan north in 1830 to establish the first parish in Vermont—St. Mary’s in Burlington.  Many French-Canadian and Irish Catholic immigrants came to Vermont in the next quarter century.

Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of Burlington—Burlington being then as now Vermont’s largest city—in 1853 to serve the 20,000 Catholics in Vermont.  By that time, there were only about four parishes in the State, but by the end of that decade, there would be a dozen parishes.  Most of the parishes were in the northwest portion of the State, near Lake Champlain between Burlington and the Canadian border, but parishes were also found in other locations including Bennington, Brattleboro, Middlebury, Montpelier, and Rutland.

Louis J. de Goesbriand was born to a wealthy family in France in 1816 and was ordained a priest there in 1840.  He came to the United States the same year and served in Cincinnati until 1847 when he was appointed vicar general of the new Diocese of Cleveland.  De Goesbriand was appointed the first Bishop of Burlington, Vermont, in 1853.

His new Diocese had 20,000 Catholics served by ten churches and five priests.  He traveled to Ireland and France to recruit new priests and brought in religious orders to establish schools.  De Goesbriand established a hospital and orphanage and built the first Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Burlington.   He called the first Diocesan Synod in 1855, attended the First Vatican Council in 1869-1870, and the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 (during which he helped write the Baltimore Catechism).  He wrote several books and pamphlets.  At the time of his death in 1899, there were 46,000 Vermont Catholics, mostly French-Canadian, served by 78 churches and 52 priests.  De Goesbriand served as Bishop of Burlington for 46 years and died in 1899 with only four dollars, having spent his inherited wealth on the needs of his Diocese.  The Diocese opened a cause for canonization for Bishop de Goesbriand in 2019.

John S. Michaud was born in Burlington in 1843 to a French-Canadian father and an Irish mother.  He graduated from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts before becoming a seminarian in New York.  He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Burlington in 1873.  Michaud served at several parishes in Vermont and established an orphanage in Burlington in 1883.  In 1892, he was appointed coadjutor bishop of the Diocese.  He became apostolic administrator of the Diocese in 1893 and became Bishop in 1899 upon the death of Bishop Goesbriand.

Bishop Michaud saw an increase of Catholic immigrants to Vermont, especially from Italy and Poland (who came to work in the stone quarries).  Michaud built new churches to accommodate the immigrants—there were about 75,000 Catholics and 100 parishes and priests in the Diocese at the time of his death in 1908.  He established the first Knights of Columbus council in the Diocese, built two hospitals, and helped establish St. Michael’s College in Winooski.