The history of the Catholic Church in Florida began in the early 1500s with the arrival of Spanish explorers and missionaries in the present-day State of Florida in the United States. After Spanish explorers spent several decades warring with the Native American tribes, Spanish Franciscan missionaries succeeded in converting thousands of natives to Catholicism through an extensive network of missions in Northern and Central Florida. However, during the 1700s this native population was severely decimated by disease and raids from the English colonies to the north.
After the Florida missions closed, the remaining Spanish and native Catholic populations retreated to St. Augustine, their main stronghold in Spanish Florida. However, when the English took control of the colony in 1763, the entire population relocated to Cuba. Spain regained control of Florida from England in 1784, but the population of the colony was now non-Catholic. When Florida was ceded to the United States in 1821, the Catholic population of Florida was still small.
The first diocese in Florida was the Diocese of St. Augustine, founded in 1870. After its founding, the diocese started recruiting more priests and establishing more parishes throughout the state. It sent the Jesuit order into the southern half of Florida to found parishes and Catholic institutions in the growing cities and towns there. After World War II, the Catholic population of Florida started to increase dramatically. The Vatican established new dioceses in Miami, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Palm Beach, Venice, and Pensacola-Tallahassee. The Diocese of Miami was elevated into an archdiocese.
As the Catholic Church has dealt with the sexual abuse scandals in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, two bishops of the Diocese of Palm Beach resigned after they admitted to sexually abusing minors in other states. A 2018 state investigation found no evidence that the Florida dioceses had suppressed or ignored credible accusations of sexual abuse.
16th century – 17th century 1500 to 1550
The first documented Catholic presence in present-day Florida was that of the expedition of the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, who explored the east and west coasts of Florida in 1513. He called the new land "La Florida". When the Spanish landed on the Gulf Coast of Florida, they discovered that the Calusa, the dominant indigenous people of the area, possessed gold jewelry and other items. Despite Spanish efforts to peacefully trade for the gold, the Calusa attacked the ships, prompting Ponce de León to sail away.
Convinced that Florida contained sizable amounts of gold, De Leon sailed from Puerto Rico with a colonizing expedition in 1521, landing near either Charlotte Harbor or the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. His two ships carried 200 men, including priests, farmers and artisans. However, before Ponce de León could establish a settlement, the Calusa again attacked the Spanish. Ponce de León was mortally wounded in the battle. The expedition then returned to Puerto Rico.
In 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez and his expedition landed at what is known as the Jungle Prada Site in present-day St. Petersburg. A contingent of Franciscan and diocesan priests led by Padre Juan Suárez (sometimes spelled Xuárez) also participated in this expedition.
In 1539, the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, leading an expedition of 10 ships and 620 men, landed near present-day Port Charlotte or San Carlos Bay in La Florida. He named the new territory "La Bahia de Espiritu Santo," in honor of the Holy Spirit. His company included 12 priests, there to evangelize the Native Americans. According to contemporary accounts, the priests celebrated mass almost every day. However, De Soto was looking to find gold and take slaves, not establish missions. Faced with such a large expedition, the Calusa evacuated their settlements near De Soto's landing. The expedition proceeded north on the Florida Peninsula, fighting different tribes, burning their villages and enslaving their inhabitants.
The expeditions of Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539 both visited Pensacola Bay, the latter of which documented the name "Bay of Ochuse".
Looking to establish missions, the Spanish Dominican priest Luis de Cáncer in 1549 arrived by sea in La Florida with several other Dominican in present-day Bradenton. Encountering a seemingly peaceful party of Tocobaga clan members, the priests decided to travel on to Tampa Bay to the Tocobaga village. Several of the priests went overland with the Tocobaga while Cáncer and the remaining party sailed to Tampa Bay to meet them. Arriving at Tampa Bay, Cáncer learned, while still on board his ship, that the Tocobaga had murdered the other priests. Ignoring advice from his companions, Cáncer went ashore alone to meet with the Tocobaga, who killed him.
1550 to 1700
The first Catholics missionaries on the east coast of La Florida were Spanish Jesuits. In 1565, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded the St. Augustine presidio, or fort, in La Florida. He then built several presidios along the Florida coastline to protect the colony from French and English raids. Priests opened missions at each of these presidios, converting the Native Americans and trading goods for food. De Aviles in 1566 brokered a peace agreement with the Calusa peoples, allowing the construction of a presidio and the San Antón de Carlos mission at Mound Key in present-day Lee County. This became the first Jesuit mission in the present day United States. The Jesuit priests Juan Rogel and Francisco de Villareal spent the winter at San Antón de Carlos studying the Calusa language, then started evangelizing among the Calusa in South Florida.
The Jesuits also established another mission in 1567 on Upper Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys, but subsequently abandoned it and returned to Spain. That same year, the Jesuits built a chapel at San Antón de Carlos. Conflicts with the Calusa soon increased, prompting de Avilés to leave San Antón de Carlos in 1569. In 1571, after another brief, unsuccessful trip to Northern Florida, the Jesuits abandoned all their missionary efforts in La 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. As missionaries started establishing missions in the northern and central parts of La Florida, the Vatican placed them under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Diocese of Santiago de Cuba in Santiago, Cuba.
In 1693, King Charles II of Spain declared that any enslaved people from the English colonies who converted to Catholicism would be free in La Florida. Most of these African-American refugees travelled to St. Augustine, but others reached Pensacola. These Spanish policies eventually prompted slave owners from the English colonies to raid La Florida to recover their former slaves.
18th century
By the early 1700s, the Franciscans had established a network of 40 missions in Northern and Central Florida, with 70 priests ministering to over 25,000 Native American converts. These missions included farms and ranches, tended by the native converts, that produced food for La Florida.
However, the native populations in La Florida were already declining, weakened by European diseases. During the Queen Anne's War, raids by English settlers and their Creek Native American allies from the Carolinas totally decimated this population, eventually forcing the Franciscans to close their missions. M. A. Young, Gloria The Expedition of Hernando De Soto West of the Mississippi, 1541–1543. University of Arkansas Press, 1999. p. 24. The Spanish settlers and their converts retreated to St. Augustine and Pensacola.
After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Spain ceded all of La Florida to England in exchange for the return of Cuba, which the English had captured in 1762. For ease of administration, the English then divided La Florida into West Florida (the Florida Panhandle) and East Florida (the Florida Peninsula). Despite English promises of religious tolerance towards Catholics in the colonies, the entire population of St. Augustine migrated to Cuba.
In 1781, during the American Revolution, Spain recaptured part of West Florida from the English. They established St. Michael the Archangel Parish that same year in Pensacola. The first Catholic parish in that city, St. Michael is now the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel.
Spain regained control of all of West and East Florida in 1784 from England as part of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. However, at this time, the population of the Floridas consisted mainly of emancipated slaves, Seminole Native Americans and Loyalist refugees from the new United States, the vast majority of them non-Catholic
The Vatican in 1787 transferred the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the two Floridas from the Diocese of Santiago in Cuba to the Diocese of San Cristobal de la Habana in Cuba. In 1793, the Vatican again changed the jurisdiction for the Floridas, moving both colonies from Havana to the Apostolic Vicariate of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. This vicariate was based in New Orleans, then under the Spanish Province of Louisiana. When the United States acquired Louisiana with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, New Orleans and vicariate came under American control.
19th century
In the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Spain ceded both East and West Florida to the United States, which then established the Florida Territory in 1821. In 1825, Pope Leo XII erected the Vicariate of Alabama and Florida in Mobile, Alabama. The new vicariate included the few Catholics left in Florida.Pope Pius VIII in 1829 erected the Diocese of Mobile, giving it jurisdiction over the Florida Panhandle. The first Catholic church in Tallahassee, Blessed Sacrament, was dedicated in 1845.
In 1850, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Savannah, which included Georgia and the new State of Florida east of the Apalachicola River. The first Catholic church in Jacksonville, Immaculate Conception, was founded in 1854. It is now the Basilica of Immaculate Conception.
In 1858, Pius IX moved Florida into a new Apostolic Vicariate of Florida and named Bishop Augustin Verot as its vicar apostolic. Since the new vicariate had only three priests, Vérot travelled to France in 1859, where he recruited seven more priests.Michael V. Gannon, The Cross in the Sand (University of Florida, 1983) pp. 167-168. After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, priest from the vicariate started visiting the southern part of the state.
Verot in 1866 requested that the Sisters of St. Joseph in France sent a contingent of nuns to St. Augustine to found a school for recently emancipated slaves. It later became St. Joseph Academy, now the oldest Catholic high school in the state.In 1870 the Vatican converted the Apostolic Vicariate of Florida into the Diocese of St. Augustine, with Verot as its first bishop. The new diocese covered the entire state. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mission (later St. Francis Xavier Parish) was erected in Fort Myers in 1878.
The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary founded the Academy of the Holy Names, a girls school in Tampa, in 1881. It was the first Catholic school on the Florida Gulf Coast. That same year, St. James Church was dedicated in Orlando, the first Catholic church in that city. It is now St. James Cathedral. Arizona jurist Edmund F. Dunne established the Catholic colony of San Antonio in Pasco County on the Gulf Coast in the early 1880s. Residence in the town was originally restricted to practicing Catholics, most of whom were Irish and German immigrants.Horgan, James J. (1990). Pioneer College: The Centennial History of Saint Leo College, Saint Leo Abbey, and Holy Name Priory. Saint Leo, FL. Saint Leo College Press.