The Diocese of St. Augustine (Latin: Dioecesis Sancti Augustini) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory of the Catholic Church, located in the northeastern section of Florida in the United States. It includes the cities of St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and Gainesville.

The Diocese of St. Augustine is a suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami, covering much of North Florida. The bishop's seat is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. As of 2023, the current bishop is Erik T. Pohlmeier.

On March 11, 1870, the Vatican erected the Diocese of St. Augustine. It covered most of the Florida peninsula until the 1950s, when Florida's expanding population necessitated the creation of new dioceses (until 1958 it was the only Catholic See in Florida).

The first Catholic presence in present-day Florida was the expedition of the Spaniard Juan Ponce de León, who arrived somewhere on the Gulf Coast in 1513. Hostility from the native Calusa people prevented him from landing. De Leon returned to the region with a colonizing expedition in 1521, landing near either Charlotte Harbor or the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. His expedition had 200 men, including several priests.

In 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, hoping to find gold in Florida, landed near present day Port Charlotte or San Carlos Bay. He named the new territory "La Bahia de Espiritu Santo," in honor of the Holy Spirit. DeSoto led an expedition of 10 ships and 620 men. His company included 12 priests, there to evangelize the Native Americans. His priests celebrated mass almost every day. Unwilling to attack such a large expedition, the Calusa evacuated their settlements near the landing area. The De Soto expedition later proceeded to the Tampa Bay area and then into central Florida.

The Spanish missionary Reverend Luis de Cáncer arrived by sea with several Dominican priests in present day Bradenton in 1549. Encountering a seemingly peaceful party of Tocobaga clan members, they decided to travel on to Tampa Bay. Several of the priests went overland with the Tocobaga while Cáncer and the rest of the party sailed to Tampa Bay to meet them.

Arriving at Tampa Bay, Cáncer learned, while still on his ship, that the Tocobaga had murdered the priests in the overland party. Ignoring advice to leave the area, Cáncer went ashore, where he too was murdered. The Spanish attempted to establish another mission in the Tampa Bay area in 1567, but it was soon abandoned.

The first Catholics in Eastern Florida were a group of Spanish Jesuits who founded a mission in 1566 on Upper Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. After several years of disease and turbulent relations with the Native American inhabitants, the missionaries returned to Spain.The Spanish attempted to establish another mission in the Tampa Bay area in 1567, but soon abandoned it.

In 1571, Spanish Jesuit missionaries made an brief, unsuccessful trip to Northern Florida. Two years later, in 1573, several Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived in present day St. Augustine. They established the Mission Nombre de Dios in 1587 at a village of the Timucuan people. By 1606, Florida was under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Havana in Cuba.

In 1565, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of Saint Augustine and Governor of Spanish Florida, brokered a peace agreement with the Calusa peoples. This agreement allowed him to build the San Antón de Carlos mission at Mound Key in what is now Lee County. Menéndez de Avilés also built a fort at Mound Key and established a garrison.

San Antón de Carlos was the first Jesuit mission in the Western Hemisphere and the first Catholic presence within the Venice area. Juan Rogel and Francisco de Villareal spent the winter at the mission studying the Calusa language, then started evangelizing among the Calusa in southern Florida. The Jesuits built a chapel at the mission in 1567. Conflicts with the Calusa soon increased, prompting Menéndez de Avilés to abandon San Antón de Carlos in 1569.

In 1571, Spanish Jesuit missionaries made an brief, unsuccessful trip to Northern Florida. Two years later, in 1573, several Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived in present day St. Augustine. They established the Mission Nombre de Dios in 1587 at a village of the Timucuan people. By 1606, Florida was under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Havana in Cuba.

By the early 1700's, the Spanish Franciscans had established a network of 40 missions in Northern and Central Florida, with 70 priests ministering to over 25,000 Native American converts.

However, raids by British settlers and their Creek Native American allies from the Carolinas eventually shut down the missions. Part of the reason for the raids was that the Spanish colonists gave refuge to enslaved people who had escaped the Carolinas. A number of Timucuan Catholic converts in Northern Florida were slaughtered during these incursions.

After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Spain ceded all of Florida to Great Britain for the return of Cuba. Given the antagonism of Protestant Great Britain to Catholicism, the majority of the Catholic population in Florida fled to Cuba.

After the American Revolution, Spain regained control of Florida in 1784. from Great Britain. In 1793, the Vatican changed the jurisdiction for Florida Catholics from Havana to the Apostolic Vicariate of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, based in New Orleans.

In the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Spain ceded all of Florida to the United States, which established the Florida Territory in 1821. In 1825, Pope Leo XII erected the Vicariate of Alabama and Florida, which included all of Florida, based in Mobile Alabama.

In 1850, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Savannah, which included Georgia and all of Florida east of the Apalachicola River. In 1858, Pius IX moved Florida into a new Apostolic Vicariate of Florida and named Bishop Augustin Verot as vicar apostolic. Since the new vicariate had only three priests, Vérot travelled to France in 1859 to recruit more. He succeeded in bringing back seven priests. The first Catholic parish in Tampa, St. Louis, was founded in 1859. He also built new churches in Fernandina Beach and Tallahassee. Three Christian Brothers from Canada opened a boys' school in St. Augustine.

During the American Civil War, Vérot condemned the looting of the Catholic church at Amelia Island, Florida, by Union Army troops. He personally evacuated several Sisters of Mercy from Jacksonville to Savannah through the battle zone in Georgia. After the war, Vérot published a pastoral letter urging Catholics in the diocese to "put away all prejudice ... against their former servants". In 1866, the Sisters of St. Joseph were introduced from France, and despite the most adverse conditions, they had several flourishing schools and academies in operation before many years.

On March 11, 1870, Pius IX elevated the Vicariate of Florida into the Diocese of St. Augustine and named Vérot as its first bishop. The new diocese covered all of Florida except for the Florida Panhandle region. Vérot died in 1876. In 1877, Pius IX named Reverend John Moore of Charleston as the second bishop of St. Augustine.

A contingent of Benedictine monks arrived in San Antonio, Florida, in 1886 initially to serve German immigrants. In 1887, a yellow fever outbreak in Florida killed several priests in the diocese. That same year, a fire destroyed the Cathedral of St. Augustine. At Moore's request, a group of Jesuit fathers arrived in Tampa, Florida, in 1888 to replace the priests lost to illness. In August 1888, the St. Mary's Home for Orphan Girls was opened in Jacksonville, Florida. That same year, yellow fever broke out again in Jacksonville. With the local priest William J. Kenny sidelined by the disease, Moore rushed there to run the parish and tend to the sick.

In 1889, Moore asked the Benedictines to establish several mission churches on the Florida Gulf Coast from Pasco County northward. He requested that the Jesuits cover Hillsborough County southward to Key West. Moore died in 1901.

In 1902, Monsignor William Kenny was appointed as the third bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine by Pope Leo XIII. During his tenure as bishop, Kenny increased the recruitment of Irish priests and nuns, reorganized diocesan offices, expanded missionary efforts to Florida's interior and smaller towns, and more than doubled diocesan fundraising. He also established the first Catholic parish for African Americans in the state. In 1913, the Florida Legislature had passed legislation prohibiting white women from teaching African-American children, a measure aimed at non-segregated Catholic schools. Considering the law unconstitutional, Kenny told his teaching nuns to ignore it. Kenny died in 1913.

The next bishop of St. Augustine was Reverend Michael Curley, named by Pope Pius X in 1914. In 1916, Florida Governor Park Trammell ordered the arrest of three Sisters of St. Joseph for violating the law on teaching African-American children. Curley vigorously attacked their arrests as part of a campaign against Catholic schools, gaining strong support from other Catholic prelates in the United States.

Curley attracted national attention in 1917 by successfully battling a bill in the Florida Legislature that would have mandated inspections of convents. Curley refused to comply with it. He led a successful legal campaign to have the law declared unconstitutional. He also sought to educate Floridians about Catholicism and demonstrate the bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan. By the end of his tenure, the Catholic population of the diocese had grown from 39,000 to 41,000, with 40 new churches built. In 1921, Pope Benedict XV named Curley as the new archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

In 1922, Monsignor Patrick Barry was appointed the fifth bishop of St. Augustine by Pope Pius XI. In 1931, Barry instituted an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche at the Mission Nombre de Dios in order to draw attention to the heritage of the Catholic Church in St. Augustine. In 1940, Barry founded Barry University in Miami Shores along with his family members. Barry died in 1940 after 18 years in office.

Pius XII named Monsignor Joseph Hurley of the Diocese of Cleveland as the next bishop of St. Augustine. In 1958, Pius XII erected the Diocese of Miami, taking its territory in South Florida from the Diocese of Augustine. Hurley was a staunch opponent of the American Civil Rights actions during the 1960s, even avoiding Martin Luther King Jr. at the airport when their paths crossed unexpectedly. King would eventually write Hurley a letter requesting his support for the movement, but failed to gain it. Hurley died in 1967.

Bishop Paul Tanner, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, was the next bishop of St. Augustine, selected by Pope Paul VI in 1968. That same year, the pope erected the Dioceses of Orlando and St. Petersburg, both taking territory from the Diocese of St. Augustine. In 1975, Paul VI erected the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, taking more territory from St. Augustine. Tanner retired in 1979. His replacement was Auxiliary Bishop John J. Snyder from the Diocese of Brooklyn, named by Pope John Paul II that same year. Snyder entered retirement in 2000.

In 2001, John Paul II appointed Monsignor Victor Galeone of the Archdiocese of Baltimore as bishop of St. Augustine. Galeone retired in 2011 and Pope Benedict XVI replaced him with Auxiliary Bishop Felipe de Jesús Estévez of Miami.

Estévez initiated the first ecumenical vespers at the bishop-level in Florida in 2014 at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. The service was attended by Protestant and Orthodox leaders, clergy and lay people. He attended the installation of Bishop Robert Schaefer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America near Tampa, Florida. He collaborated with local Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders in support of the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew in Jerusalem in 2014. In 2019, Estévez announced that the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, located in the Nombre de Dios mission, had been designated by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as a national shrine. Estévez retired in 2022.

The current bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine is Bishop Erik T. Pohlmeier from the Diocese of Little Rock, appointed by Pope Francis in 2022

The parents of an 11-year-old girl met with Bishop Snyder in 1991 to say that their daughter told them she had been sexually assaulted by Reverend William Malone. Snyder had dismissed the allegations because the girl did not attend the meeting. However, in 1992, Snyder moved Malone to a different parish in Palm Coast. When Malone transferred back to New York that same year, the diocese learned that he had impregnated another girl. Snyder secretly arranged child support payments from the diocese to the girl.

In 2003, the woman who accused Malone in 1991 repeated her allegations to Bishop Galeone. He never submitted the accusation to the diocesan review board, nor contacted the local district attorney. She returned to the diocese in 2018 with the same accusations. This time, the review board looked at the allegations and deemed them credible. After Malone was publicly listed with credible accusations, three more women in 2019 accused him of sexual abuse.

In March 2020, the diocese removed Reverend John H. Dux from ministry after determining that sex abuse allegations against him from 1976 were credible. His accuser, Patrick Colville, said that Dux took him when he was 14 to the Florida State Fair near Tampa in 1976. That night in a hotel room, Dux forced Colville to perform oral sex. A second man came forward to accuse Dux of similar alleged crimes between 1980 and 1982 at St. Madeleine Sophie in High Springs.

In November 2020, the state of Florida released a list of 97 Catholic priests who were "credibly accused" of committing sex abuse, with five accused of committing sex abuse while serving in the diocese. However, a total of 13 priests on this statewide list were tied to the diocese.

1. Augustin Verot, P.S.S. (1870–1876)
2. John Moore (1877–1901)
3. William John Kenny (1902–1913)
4. Michael Joseph Curley (1914–1921), appointed Archbishop of Baltimore-Washington
5. Patrick Joseph Barry (1922–1940)
6. Joseph Patrick Hurley (1940–1967), Archbishop (personal title) in 1949
7. Paul Francis Tanner (1968–1979)
8. John J. Snyder (1979–2000)
9. Victor Galeone (2001–2011)
10. Felipe de Jesús Estévez (2011–2022)
11. Erik T. Pohlmeier (2022–present)

• Thomas Joseph McDonough (1947–1957), appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Savannah and later Bishop of Savannah and Archbishop of Louisville

• Maurice Patrick Foley, appointed Bishop of Tuguegarao in the Philippines in 1910
• William Turner, appointed Bishop of Buffalo in 1919
• John Joseph Fitzpatrick (priest here, 1948–1958), appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Miami in 1968 and later Bishop of Brownsville
• William Thomas Larkin, appointed Bishop of Saint Petersburg in 1979
• Joseph Keith Symons, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Petersburg in 1981
• Robert Joseph Baker, appointed Bishop of Charleston in 1999 and later Bishop of Birmingham
• Thanh Thai Nguyen, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Orange in 2017

• Bishop John J. Snyder High School – Jacksonville
• Bishop Kenny High School – Jacksonville
• Morning Star High School – Jacksonville
• St. Francis High School – Gainesville
• St. Joseph Academy – St. Augustine

• Annunciation – Middleburg
• Assumption – Jacksonville
• Blessed Trinity – Jacksonville
• Cathedral Parish – St. Augustine
• Christ the King – Jacksonville
• Epiphany – Lake City
• Guardian – Jacksonville
• Holy Family – Jacksonville
• Holy Spirit – Jacksonville
• Morning Star – Jacksonville
• Palmer Academy – Ponte Vedra Beach
• Queen of Peace – Gainesville
• Resurrection – Jacksonville
• Sacred Heart – Jacksonville
• St Elizabeth Ann Seton – Palm Coast
• St. Joseph – Jacksonville
• St. Matthew – Jacksonville
• St. Michael Academy – Fernandina Beach
• St. Patrick – Jacksonville
• St. Patrick Interparish – Gainesville
• St. Paul – Jacksonville Beach
• St. Paul – Riverside
• San Jose – Jacksonville
• San Juan del Rio – Saint Johns

There are 53 active parishes in the Diocese of St. Augustine.

• Basilica of the Immaculate Conception - Pope Francis raised Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville to a Minor Basilica in 2013.
• Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine (St. Augustine, Florida) - Originally established in 1565 and re-built in the 18th century, it is the oldest church in Florida.

Coat of arms of Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine

Notes Arms was designed and adopted when the diocese was erected Adopted 1870 Escutcheon The diocesan coats of arms has a background of red (gules) and silver (argent) quarters. It displays a flaming heart pierced by a gold arrow. Symbolism The red and silver background represent the fields of Castile and Leon in Spain. The flaming heart pierced by the gold arrow is the traditional emblem of Augustine of Hippo, symbolizing his quotation from Confessions, Chapter 1: "Our hearts shall ever restless be, until they find their rest in Thee."

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