Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archidiœcesis Paulopolitana et Minneapolitana | |
|---|---|
 Cathedral of Saint Paul | |
| Location | |
| Country |  United States |
| Ecclesiastical province | Saint Paul and Minneapolis |
| Statistics | |
| Area | 6,187 sq mi (16,020 km2) |
| Population - Total - Catholics | (as of 2017) 3,337,219 870,490 (26.1%) |
| Parishes | 187 |
| Information | |
| Denomination | Catholic |
| Sui iuris church | Latin Church |
| Rite | Roman Rite |
| Established | July 19, 1850 (173 years ago) |
| Cathedral | Cathedral of Saint Paul (Saint Paul) |
| Co-cathedral | Basilica of Saint Mary (Minneapolis) |
| Patron saint | Saint Paul (Primary) Saint John Vianney (Secondary)[1] |
| Current leadership | |
| Pope | Francis |
| Archbishop | Bernard Hebda |
| Auxiliary Bishops | Joseph A. Williams Michael Izen |
| Bishops emeritus | John Clayton Nienstedt Lee A. Piché |
| Map | |
 | |
| Website | |
| archspm.org | |
The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis (Latin: Archidiœcesis Paulopolitana et Minneapolitana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in the United States. It is led by an archbishop who administers the archdiocese from the cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The archbishop has both a cathedral and co-cathedral: the mother church – the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Saint Paul, and the co-cathedral, the Basilica of Saint Mary[2] in Minneapolis.
The archdiocese has 188 parish churches in twelve counties of Minnesota. It counts in its membership an approximate total of 750,000 people. It has two seminaries, the Saint Paul Seminary and Saint John Vianney College Seminary. Its official newspaper is The Catholic Spirit.
The first Catholic presence in present day Minnesota was recorded in 1680. Louis Hennepin, a Belgian Franciscan Recollect and explorer, found a waterfall on the upper Mississippi River. Hennepin named the waterfall the Chutes de Saint-Antoine or St. Anthony Falls after his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. The French formally claimed the territory in 1689.[3]
In 1727, René Boucher de La Perrière and Michel Guignas built Fort Beauharnois on the shore of Lake Pepin. They established St. Michael the Archangel, the first Catholic chapel in Minnesota. The French abandoned the fort and the chapel in the 1750s during the French and Indian War.[3] After the war ended, the Spanish took over the French territories in the Great Plains and Old Northwest, including Minnesota. Some French-speaking colonists from Switzerland moved from their original settlements near Fort Garry in Manitoba to a location close to Saint Anthony Falls. The settlement became known as Saint Pierre.
After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States gained control of vast areas in the continent, including present day Minnesota. Pope Leo XII in 1826 erected the Diocese of Saint Louis, giving it jurisdiction over Minnesota and other parts of the region.[4] In 1837, the Vatican erected the Diocese of Dubuque, with jurisdiction over the new Wisconsin Territory, which included Minnesota.[4]
Bishop Mathias Loras of Dubuque in 1839 visited Fort Snelling and Saint Pierre. In 1840, Loras sent Lucien Galtier to Minnesota as a missionary. Galtier learned that a group of Catholic from the Red River Colony had settled on the east bank of the Mississippi River. He decided that it was a good location for a church as it was near a steamboat landing. Two French settlers offered a location for a church, and other settlers provided materials and labor to build a log chapel. Galtier wrote, "I had previously to this time fixed my residence at Saint Peter's and as the name of Paul is generally connected with that of Peter... I called it Saint Paul."[5] With the gradual increase of population about the chapel, the community developed into a village known as Saint Paul's Landing.
Pope Pius IX on July 19, 1850 erected the Diocese of Saint Paul in Minnesota, taking its territory from the Diocese of Dubuque. The new diocese covered all of the new Minnesota Territory, which included Minnesota and the future states of North Dakota and South Dakota.[6] The pope named Monsignor Joseph Crétin of St. Louis as the first bishop of Saint Paul in Minnesota.
In addition to the French Canadians large contingents of Irish and German Catholics arrived, who located in St. Paul, and in places along the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Minnesota Rivers.[7] In 1851, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet came to St. Paul, and soon opened schools at St. Paul and St. Anthony Falls.
In 1859, Reverend Thomas Grace was named Bishop of St. Paul. The number of Catholics in the diocese continued to grow, with many coming from Bohemia and Poland. The number of priests grew with the increase of the people, and they were so chosen as to correspond to the needs of the parishes. Hospitals were opened at Minneapolis and New Ulm, orphan asylums were erected at St. Paul and Minneapolis, and homes were established for the aged poor.[7] In 1875, the Diocese of Saint Paul was transferred from the ecclesiastical province of St. Louis to that of Milwaukee.
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Main article: John Ireland (bishop) |
John Ireland was born in Burnchurch, County Kilkenny, Ireland. During the American Civil War he served as chaplain to the Fifth Minnesota Regiment. He was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Grace, whom he succeeded in 1884. Pope Leo XIII elevated the see to the rank of archdiocese on May 4, 1888, and its name was changed to reflect this.[8]
Pope Leo XIII erected the Diocese of Winona in 1889, taking southern Minnesota from the Archdiocese of Saint Paul.[9]
Disturbed by reports that Catholic immigrants in eastern cities were suffering from social and economic handicaps, Ireland and Bishop John Spalding of the Diocese of Peoria founded the Irish Catholic Colonization Association. This organization bought land in rural areas to the west and south and helped resettle Irish Catholics from the urban slums. Settlements such as De Graff, Clontarf (Swift County), Adrian (Nobles County), Avoca, Fulda (Murry County), Graceville (Big Stone County) and Ghent (Lyon County) were founded by the Association.[7]
Charlotte O'Brien, philanthropist and activist for female emigrants, found that many young Irish immigrant women were being lured into sex trafficking through false offers of employment. She proposed the establishment of an information bureau at Castle Garden, the disembarkation point for immigrants arriving in New York. She also proposed creating a temporary shelter and a chapel in Manhattan for these immigrants to Ireland. He raised the matter at the May 1883 meeting of the Irish Catholic Association which endorsed the plan and voted to establish the Castle Garden bureau .[10] It also created the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Protection of Irish Immigrant Girls in Manhattan.
Ireland was a strong supporter of the temperance movement, and of racial equality. On the other hand, his less than diplomatic relations with Eastern Catholics drove them into the Orthodox Church.[11]
The author of The Church and Modern Society (1897), Ireland opposed the use of foreign languages in American Catholic churches and parochial schools. National (ethnic) parishes were common at the time because of the large influx of immigrants to the U.S. from European countries. In this, he differed from Michael Corrigan, Archbishop of New York, who believed that the more quickly Catholics gave up their native languages, customs, and traditions in order to assimilate into a Protestant culture, the sooner they would forsake their religion as well. Different views on the so-called "Americanization" of the Catholic Church in the United States split the hierarchy in the 1890s.
Pope Paul VI in 1966 renamed the Archdiocese of Saint Paul as the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis to reflect the growth of Minneapolis. Coadjutor Archbishop John Nienstedt succeeded to the post on the retirement of his predecessor, Archbishop Harry Flynn, on May 2, 2008.[12] He stepped down on June 15, 2015, and Bernard Hebda was named the next Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.[13]
James Porter and Curtis Wehmeyer were two of the most notorious predator priests to serve in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. In November 2012, Wehmeyer pled guilty to 20 sex abuse and child pornography charges.[14] In 2013, MPR News obtained a letter revealing that an archdiocesan official, Reverend Kevin McDonough, had known of the archdiocesan decision in 2011 to cover up an allegation suggesting that Wehmeyer had sexually abused two brothers in his camper.[15] When the reported abuse took place, the camper was parked outside Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul, where Wehmeyer served for six years and where the mother of the boys was employed.[15]
In 2015, Wehmeyer was laicized by the Vatican while serving a five-year prison sentence.[16] Though Porter, who would later be convicted in 1993 of sex abusing 28 children while serving in the Diocese of Fall River in Massachusetts, was never convicted for alleged sex abuse he committed in Minnesota before he left the priesthood in 1974, he would serve four months in a Minnesota prison following a December 1992 conviction involving alleged sex abuse of his children's babysitter.[17][18] The Minnesota conviction, which also came with a six-month prison sentence, was overturned shortly before his 1993 Massachusetts trial and conviction.[19][15]
In May 2018, the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis agreed to pay victims of clergy sexual abuse a total of $210 million in settlement, which awaited court approval.[20] By the time the settlement was issued, 91 priests who served in the archdiocese were accused of sexually abusing 450 victims.[21] In June 2018, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy reorganization in order to find enough money to pay for the settlement.[22][23][24] Once approved, the settlement became the second largest in any Catholic bankruptcy case in United States history and largest overall for any archdiocese which was forced into bankruptcy.[25][26] In September 2018, survivors of clergy abuse officially concluded a month-long vote which resulted in the approval the settlement;[27] the vote had started on August 21.[28][29] The settlement was then approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge.[30]
In May 2018, John Bertrand was sentenced to 10 years probation after pleading guilty to having sexual contact with a woman at her Mendota Heights home under the guise of mass.[31][32] In September 2020, a lawsuit was filed alleging that sex abuse was "allowed" to be committed by at least one priest at a Minnesota Catholic music camp managed by Twin Cities-based Catholic music composer David Haas.[33] Haas himself has faced previous sex abuse allegations as well.[34]
In 2019, after the archdiocesan bankruptcy was settled, Archbishop Hebda called for a synod to set pastoral priorities for the future. Delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the synod took place in June 2022.
This is a list of the bishops who have served the archdiocese.
The Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Saint and Minneapolis as of 2023 had 79 elementary schools and 16 high schools with a total student enrollment of approximately 31,000.[36]
The Archdiocese has two seminaries,
Both seminaries are located on the campus of the University of St. Thomas. From 1923 to 1971, the archdiocese operated a high school seminary, Nazareth Hall Preparatory Seminary.
While the majority of archdiocesan seminarians receive their formation at Saint Paul or Saint John Vianney, some go to Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Winona, Minnesota or the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
