History of Catholicism in America

In 1895, Pope Leo XIII penned an encyclical to the Catholic Church in the United States.

All intelligent men are agreed,

he wrote, that America seems destined for greater things.

Now it is our wish that the

Catholic Church should not only share in,

but help to bring about this perspective of greatness.

But as the Holy Father noted,

the Church had already been here from the start.

Four centuries prior, one Catholic explorer ventured out

into the great unknown and returned home with the story,

as he wrote in one letter,

of a land more richly endowed than I know or am able to say.

Few moments in history have carried more consequence.

Christopher Columbus renewed the West's confidence in itself and launched

that great age of discovery, exploration, and expansion from which America was born.

Some have claimed that the Catholic faith is a foreign import to our country.

Only one of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence was Catholic,

Charles Carroll of Maryland, for whom one of this conference's hosts is named.

Just two Catholic names appear on our Constitution itself.

But the Catholic faith has always been part of the American story. The

first Christian service on our soil was a Catholic Mass.

The oldest permanent settlement in the United States is the town of St. Augustine,

planted by Spanish Catholics on the coastal sands of my home state of Florida.

Catholic saints were martyred on American soil well over a century before the Revolution began.

In missions and settlements,

wilderness forts, and trading posts stretching from the first colonies to the distant frontier,

Catholic explorers,

soldiers,

priests, and pioneers consecrated this new world to their ancient faith and Christianed its land with Catholic names.

Maryland, St. Louis, San Francisco, Santa Fe, almost

every region of what is now the United States was first explored and mapped by

Catholics. This is no coincidence.

Christianity taught the West to think in continents and centuries,

rather than villages and seasons.

The Church calls us, as Christ told St. Peter to Duke of Ultham,

to put out into the deep.

Catholics across time have answered the call,

from the forests of pagan Europe to the wilderness of North America,

to bring new worlds to Christ.

This is the inheritance which has shaped our pioneer nation.

The spirit of expansion and discovery which would conquer continents,

unlock the mysteries of the universe, and eventually transcend the limits of Earth itself.