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Chapte1r
The Founding of the Diocese of
Rochester
The Catholic faith was rst proclaimed in western New York by French Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. But it wasn’t until the next century, in 1789, that Pope Pius VI established the rst U.S. diocese in Baltimore, Md. This premiere see covered all of the new nation, then spanning the entire territory east of the Mississippi River except Florida and the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
O
n April 8, 1808, Pope Pius VII elevated the vast
diocese into the Archdiocese of Baltimore, creating “suffragen” sees at New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Bardstown (later Louisville), Ky.
Waves of European immigrants had begun to populate the new nation, bringing their Catholic faith and practices with them. By 1847, a new Buffalo diocese was shaped from New York’s westernmost counties. The original Buffalo See included all 12 counties that today constitute the Diocese of Rochester.
In 1857, following two cholera epidemics, Buffalo Bishop John Timon invited the Daughters of Charity, founded in America by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1809, to establish a Rochester hospital. In that year, three religious sisters, led by Sister Superior Hieronymo O’Brien, arrived in the city with just 50 cents among them.
Over his 41-year tenure, Bernard J. McQuaid, founding bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, established a signi cant legacy. He brought several religious orders to the diocese, pushed for free parochial schools at all large parishes, founded St. Bernard’s and St. Andrew’s seminaries, and established Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
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