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.[3][4] 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.[5]
Reverend
R. Luke Concanen was appointed the first
bishop of what was then Diocese of New York in 1808. As of 2024, the current archbishop of New York is Cardinal
Timothy Dolan.
On November 26, 1784,
Pope Pius VI erected the
Apostolic Prefecture of United States of America, creating a separate jurisdiction for the new United States from the Catholic Church of the United Kingdom.[6] That same year, the new State of New York repealed the Colonial-era law prohibiting Catholic priests from residing in New York.[7]
With the anti-priest law repealed, the French counsel,
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 d 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.[8]
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.[9][6]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.[10]
1808 to 1820
On April 8, 1808,
Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of New York and three other diocese, 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 it was formed 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 Reverend
Anthony Kohlmann, rector of St. Peter's Parish, to administer the diocese as his
vicar general. 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.[12] Concanen died in Italy in 1810, having never made it to the United States.[13]
On October 4, 1814, Reverend
John Connolly was appointed the second bishop of New York by Pius VII.[14]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.[15] The Catholic population of the diocese was approximately 15,000, primarily Irish with some English, French and Germans.[16]
In 1817, Connolly invited the
Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland, to open the first Catholic orphanage in New York City.[17][18] 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.[19]The first parish in
Utica, St. John's, was erected in 1819.[20] In 1823, St. Patrick's Parish was founded in
Rochester, the first in that city.[21]Connolly died on February 6, 1825.
1825 to 1840
To replace Connolly,
Pope Leo VI in 1826 named Reverend
John Dubois as the next bishop of New York.[22]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.[23]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.[24]
In 1837, at Dubois' request,
Pope Gregory XVI appointed Reverend
John J. Hughes as
coadjutor bishop of New York to assist the ailing bishop.[25] 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.[26]
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.[27]
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.[28] Despite Hughes' lobbying, the
New York State Legislature passed the Maclay Act in 1842, which prohibited public funding of religious schools.[29]
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.[27]Hughes decided to found an independent Catholic school system in the city. By 1870, 19 percent of the city's children were attending Catholic schools.[30]
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.[9]
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:
The
Diocese of Newark, which took all the New Jersey counties from the new archdiocese
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.[27]
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 local to the United States. Other priests in Manhattan confronted mobs, stopping their rampages.[38][27] 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.[39] 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 McCloskey.[40][41]
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.[42][43] 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.[44]
On July 25, 1885,
Pope Leo III 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.
1885 to 1900
McCloskey died on October 18, 1885; Corrigan automatically succeeded him as archbishop.[41]
During the 1886 mayoral campaign in New York City, Reverend
Edward McGlynn, pastor of
St. Stephen's Parish in Manhattan, announced that he would speak at a political rally for the journalist
Henry George, the candidate of the
United Labor Party. Corrigan, who was very close to the Democratic political machine at
Tammany Hall, had had previous conflicts with McGlynn over his political affiliations. He ordered McGlynn to cancel his speech. McGlynn delivered the speech anyway and Corrigan immediately removed him as pastor of St. Stephen's. McGlynn was excommunicated by the Vatican in 1887.[45]
In the 1880's, the Vatican became concerned that the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, dominated by Irish prelates, was neglecting the needs of the increasing numbers of Catholic Italian immigrants. The Vatican rebuked Corrigan in 1887 for neglecting the Italians and
treating them in a humiliating way. The Irish parishes would only allow Italians to attend Mass in church basements. Corrigan would not approve the erection of Italian parishes, claiming that the Italians were "not very clean" and were too poor to support their own parishes.[46]
Sister
Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived in New York in 1889 from Italy to establish an orphanage in Manhattan. When she met with Corrigan, he told her that he would not allow an orphanage and that she should return to Italy. Cabrini told him that, “I am here by order of the Holy See, and here I must stay.” At that point, Corrigan relented and invited Cabrini to work in the schools. He later allowed her to open her orphanage.[46]
In 1891, Corrigan started work on St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.[47]Leo XIII in
1900 to 1967
In 1902, after a fall at the St. Joseph's construction site, Corrigan developed pneumonia and died. Leo XIII appointed Auxiliary Bishop
John Farley on September 15, 1902, as Corrigan's replacement as archbishop.[48] Farley established nearly fifty new
parochial schools within his first eight years as archbishop.[49]After Farley died in 1918,
Pope Benedict XV appointed Bishop
Patrick Hayes on March 10, 1919, as archbishop.[50] That same year, near the end of
World War I, the Vatican named Hayes as the apostolic vicar of the
Military Vicariate of the United States. This gave him jurisdiction to minster to American servicemen and women throughout the world. Succeeding archbishops of New York retained this position for the next few decades.[35]
In 1949, the 240 gravediggers at the Catholic cemeteries in the archdiocese went on strike. After negotiations with the union broke down, Spellman led a group seminarians to dig the graves at one cemetery.[53][54]Spellman eventually reached a settlement with the union.[55]
During his long tenure as archbishop, Spellman raised over $500 million for the construction of schools, churches, and other institutions.[56] During a five year period in the 1950's, he constructed 15 churches, 94 schools, 22 rectories, 60 convents and 34 other institutions in the archdiocese.[53] Spellman died of a stroke on December 3, 1967.[57]
1967 to 2000
After Spellman's death,
Pope Paul VI named Auxiliary Bishop
Terence Cooke as the seventh archbishop of New York on March 2, 1968.[58]Cooke helped implement the reforms of the
Second Vatican Council in the archdiocese, and adopted a more collegial management style than Spellman. During his tenure as archbishop, Cooke founded the following
Birthright, an organization providing provides counseling and other support for pregnant women
Inner-City Scholarship Fund, which provides financial aid for Catholic-school students
an archdiocesan housing development Program to develop housing for the poor
On October 6, 1983, Cooke died from
leukemia. To replace him
Pope John Paul II named Bishop
John O'Connor on January 26, 1984.[60]In 1986, the Vatican erected the
Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, removing jurisdiction for Catholic ministry to servicemen and women from the archbishop of New York.[61]In 1990, O'Connor started the
canonization process for
Pierre Toussaint, the formerly enslaved man from Haiti who became a Catholic philanthropist in the 19th century.[62]
2000 to present
In 2008, the archdiocese celebrated the bicentennial of its establishment as a diocese. To mark the occasion, Pope Benedict XVI visited the archdiocese from April 18 to April 20, 2008. During his visit, Benedict visited St. Patrick's Cathedral, the
United Nations,
Ground Zero, St. Joseph's Parish in
Yorkville,
St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. The pope also celebrated a mass at
Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
In 2009,
Timothy Dolan was named the 10th archbishop of New York. He was made a cardinal in February 2012.
Since the start of the 21st century, the archdiocese has been dealing with a decline in priestly vocations. This has led to the closure and merging of many parishes and the assignment of some priests to multiple parishes.[63] In January 2024, Dolan announced that the archdiocese would move its offices from the Terence Cardinal Cooke Catholic Building in Manhattan to another location close to St. Patrick's Cathedral.[64]
Archdiocesan demographics
As of 2023, the Catholic population of the archdiocese was 2,642,740. These Catholics were served by 320 archdiocesan priests, 195 priests of religious orders, and 140 international priests. The archdiocese had 228
permanent deacons and 443 men and women religious.[65]In comparison, in 1929 the Catholic population of the archdiocese was 1,273,291, with 1,314 clergy and 444 churches. Over 170,348 children were enrolled in Catholic educational and welfare institutions.[66]
As of 2023, the archdiocese had 60 men enrolled in its priestly formation program.
As of 2024, the Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of New York, the archdiocesan school system, operates 148 schools with a total enrollment of 50,154. It is headquartered in the Cooke Building in
Midtown Manhattan.[71]
Isaac Jogues –
Jesuit missionary who was active in northern New York State before establishment of Diocese of New York. Canonized in 1930
John Nepomucene Neumann – New York diocesan priest, later a
Redemptorist, fourth
Bishop of Philadelphia, founder of first Catholic diocesan school system in the United States and first American bishop to become saint. Canonized in 1977.
In August 2018, the archdiocese reported that between 2016 and 2018, its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program paid nearly $60 million to 278 victims of sex abuse by clergy.[75] On September 26, 2018, it was reported that the Archdiocese of New York, and the three other dioceses where
Theodore McCarrick served as a bishop, were facing an investigation by the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for McCarrick's alleged sex abuse.[76] On January 28, 2019, the New York State Assembly and Senate passed a law allowing prosecutors to bring criminal charges until a victim turned 28, and permitting victims to sue until age 55.[77] Governor
Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law on February 14, 2019.[78]
On April 26, 2019, the archdiocese released a list of 120 Catholic clergy accused of committing acts of sexual abuse.[79] Some of those on the list, which included both male and female church workers, had been convicted of crimes and many others were deceased.[80]Cardinal Dolan released a letter of apology, asking for forgiveness.[81]
On August 14, 2019, James Grien, who accused McCarrick of sexually abusing him when McCarrick was an auxiliary bishop of New York, sued the archdiocese.[82][83] In his lawsuit, Grien also stated that McCarrick's status as a friend of his family allowed him to continue to visit and sexually abuse him after leaving the archdiocese in 1981.[84]
On September 30, 2019, Dolan released a report written by
Barbara S. Jones, a former judge and prosecutor.[85][86] Her report stated that the archdiocese had completed the process of removing all of its remaining accused clergy from active ministry.[87][88][86] In the same report, Jones recommended that the archdiocese also hire a sex abuse "czar" to vet all complaints.[89][88][86] Jones, who was commissioned by Dolan in 2018 to conduct the review of the church's handling of abuse allegations,[90] also recommended hiring "a compliance officer for the Office of Priest Personnel to monitor its functions and oversee the new document management system".[89] Dolan also backed the Jones Report and stated at a press conference that the archdiocese was expanding its sex abuse policy as well.[86]
On October 10, 2019, Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop
John Jenik following an accusation of sex abuse.[91] Appointed auxiliary bishop by Francis in 2014, Jenik also served as vicar for the Northwest Bronx, appointed by Dolan's predecessor
Edward Egan in 2006.[92] Jenik, who had submitted his resignation letter upon turning 75 in March 2019,[91] had been out of public ministry since October 2018 after the allegation surfaced.[93]
On May 8, 2020, Cuomo extended the 2019 New York Child Victim Act's
statute of limitations deadline to file sex abuse lawsuits. Originally set for August 14, 2020, it was changed to January 14, 2021.[94]
On July 27, 2020, it was revealed that a Catholic priest who served in Orange County was named in a new sex abuse lawsuit.[95] Eight men alleged that Reverend George Boxelaar, who died in 1990, sexually abused them when they were children during the 1970s and 1980s. They added their claims to three other alleged victims of Boxelaar.[95][96] In addition to these new lawsuits, a
Scarsdale Catholic school teacher identified as Edwin Gaylor also confessed to committing acts of sex abuse.[97]
On December 3, 2020, Reverend George Rutler, pastor of the
Church of St. Michael in Manhattan, was accused by a female security guard of watching
pornography and "aggressively" groping her.[98] Rutler denied the charges and offered to temporarily step down as pastor. In May 2021, the
District Attorney of Manhattan declined to bring charges against Rutler, dismissing the accusations as "baseless."[99]
^Kate Feighery, " 'Everything Depends on the First Year': Archbishop John Hughes and his Fundraising Plan for St. Patrick's Cathedral." American Journal of Irish Studies 12 (2015): 57–76.
online
^Martin L. Meenagh, Archbishop John Hughes and the New York Schools Controversy of 1840–43American Nineteenth Century History (2004) 5#1, pp. 34–65,
10.1080/1466465042000222204 online
^Joseph McCadden, "New York's School Crisis of 1840–1842: Its Irish Antecedents." Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 41.4 (1966): 561–588.