Biography:

John Carroll, (January 8, 1735 – December 3, 1815) was a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as the first bishop and Archbishop in the United States. He served as the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland.

Carroll is also known as the founder of Georgetown University, (the oldest Roman Catholic university in the United States), and of St. John the Evangelist Parish of Rock Creek, (now Forest Glen), the first secular (diocesan) parish in the country. This means its clergy did not come from monastic orders.

Carroll joined the Society of Jesus (the "Jesuits") as a postulant at the age of 18 in 1753. In 1755, he began his studies of philosophy and theology at Liège. After fourteen years, he was ordained to the diaconate and later the priesthood in 1769. Carroll remained in Europe until he was almost 40, teaching at St-Omer and Liège. He also served as chaplain to a British aristocrat traveling on the continent. When Pope Pius VI suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773 in Europe, Carroll made arrangements to return to Maryland. The brief suppression of the "Jesuits" was a painful experience for Carroll who suspected the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith of being responsible for this ill-informed decision. As a result of laws discriminating against Catholics, there was then no public Catholic Church in Maryland. Carroll worked as a missionary in Maryland and Virginia.

Carroll founded St. John the Evangelist Parish at Forest Glen (Silver Spring) in 1774. In 1776, the Continental Congress asked Father Carroll, along with his cousin, delegate Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), fellow Marylander Samuel Chase, (1741-1811), and Benjamin Franklin, (1705/06-1790), to travel north to Quebec in the St. Lawrence River valley to try to persuade the French Canadians to join the Revolution with the lower "Thirteen Colonies." (The French Canadians had been forced to cede control of their territory in 1763 to the occupying British Army, which won the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian Wars in North America). The group was unsuccessful, but Carroll became known to other early founders of the United States Republic. (The British government enabled French Canadians to keep their language, their religion, and much of their law.)

Carroll was excommunicated by Jean-Olivier Briand, the local Quebec bishop, for his political activities. Snubbed by the local clergy on the orders of the Bishop of Quebec, Carroll took an early opportunity to accompany the ailing Franklin back to the colonial capital at Philadelphia.

The Jesuit fathers, led by Carroll and five other priests, began a series of meetings at White Marsh (in eastern Baltimore County) beginning on June 27, 1783. Through these General Chapters, they gradually organized the Roman Catholic Church in the United States on what is now the site of Sacred Heart Church in Bowie, Maryland, (Prince George's County).

The American clergy, originally reluctant to request the formation of a diocese due to fears of public misunderstanding and the possibility of a foreign bishop being imposed upon them, eventually recognized the need for a Roman Catholic bishop. The election of Samuel Seabury (1729–1796) in 1783 as the first Anglican bishop in the United States had shown that Americans had accepted the appointment of a Protestant bishop. The American clergy had received the assurances of the Continental Congress that it would not object to election of a bishop whose allegiance was to Rome.

Carroll, as Prefect Apostolic in February 1785, urged Cardinal Antonelli to create a method of appointing church authorities that would not make it appear as if they were receiving their appointment from a foreign power. A report of the status of Catholics in Maryland was appended to his letter, where he stated that despite there being only nineteen priests in Maryland, some of the more prominent families were still Catholic in faith. He did say that they may have been prone to dancing and novel-reading. The pope was so pleased with Father Carroll's report that he granted his request "that the priests in Maryland be allowed to suggest two or three names from which the Pope would choose their bishop".


Interior of the chapel at Lulworth Castle, where John Carroll was consecrated a bishop
The priests of Maryland petitioned Rome for a bishop for the United States. Cardinal Antonelli replied, allowing the priests to select the city for a cathedral and, for this case only, to name the candidate for presentation to the pope. Carroll was selected Bishop of Baltimore by the clergy of the US in April 1789 by a vote of 24 out of 26. On November 6, 1789 Pope Pius VI in Rome approved the election, naming Carroll the first Roman Catholic bishop in the newly independent United States. He was consecrated by Bishop Charles Walmesley on August 15, 1790, (the Feast of the Assumption) in the chapel of Lulworth Castle in Dorset, England, without an oath to the English church. Anglican bishop Seabury had to make an oath to the English Archbishop. Soon after this, the Episcopal Church of the United States was organized, separating more thoroughly from the Anglican church of England. Carroll was invested in his office in Maryland upon his return from another trans-Atlantic sail voyage. This took place at the parish of St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, Maryland. When he returned to Baltimore, he took his chair in the Church of St. Peter, which would serve as his pro-cathedral. St. Peter's was the first Catholic parish in Baltimore Town in 1770 and was located at the northwestern corner of North Charles and West Saratoga streets. It had an attached rectory and school, and was surrounded by a cemetery.

Old St. Peter's was built across the street and opposite from the "Mother Church of the Anglican Church in Baltimore", Old St. Paul's Church (Anglican/Episcopal) at the southeast corner of Charles and Saratoga, surrounded by its cemetery overlooking the cliffs of the Jones Falls stream to the east. St. Paul's has had four successive structures at the same site. It moved to Baltimore Town in 1730, the year after it was laid out, from Patapsco Neck in southeastern Baltimore County, where it was organized in 1692 as one of the "Original Thirty" Anglican Church parishes designated in the colonial Province of Maryland. these churches were Catholic-Anglican neighbors for over seventy years in downtown Baltimore (1770-1841).