Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington

The Pastoral Center in Hyattsville, Maryland

The ordinary of the Archdiocese of Washington is an archbishop whose cathedra is in the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in the City of Washington and who is metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Washington. Its sole suffragan see is the Diocese of Saint Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands.

The first Archbishop of Washington was Michael Joseph Curley, appointed in 1939.[7] Eight years later, on November 15, 1947, the archdiocese received its first residential archbishop, with the appointment of Patrick Aloysius O'Boyle. Donald Wuerl served as the most recent ordinary of the archdiocese. Wuerl resigned as Archbishop of Washington on October 12, 2018, in the wake of revelations about his poor handling of incidents of sex abuse when he served as Bishop of Pittsburgh.[8] However, Wuerl still led the archdiocese as apostolic administrator until a successor was installed.[9][10]

On April 4, 2019, Wilton Daniel Gregory was appointed archbishop by Pope Francis.[11][12] The same day, the Archdiocese of Washington announced that Gregory would be installed as the seventh Archbishop of Washington.[13] Gregory, who was originally scheduled to be installed on May 17, 2019,[13] was installed on May 21, 2019, becoming the first African American to lead the Archdiocese of Washington.[14] Pope Francis raised Wilton Daniel Gregory to the rank of cardinal at a consistory held in Rome on November 28, 2020. He is the first American with African ancestry to become a Roman Catholic cardinal.

On March 25, 1634, the first Catholic Mass in the English-speaking colonies was celebrated by Andrew White on St. Clement's Island, Maryland, in what is now part of the Archdiocese of Washington.[15] The Catholic founders of the Maryland settlement then established the colony as a place of religious freedom. During the colonial era, however, when others took power, Catholics would become a persecuted people suffering the wrath of oppression allowed by local penal laws.[15]

Upon the founding of the United States, a Jesuit priest, John Carroll, was elected head of the missionary territory (later Prefecture Apostolic) of the United States. In 1789 the Diocese of Baltimore (later the Archdiocese of Baltimore) was established with Carroll as its first bishop, and given ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the entire nation.[16]

On July 22, 1939, Pope Pius XII created the Archdiocese of Washington from territory which was then within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, with a single prelate serving as the archbishop of both archdioceses, two ecclesiastical jurisdictions united in persona episcopi.[17][4][15] The Archdiocese dates its founding from 1939.[18] On November 15, 1947, Pope Pius appointed Washington's first residential archbishop.[4][15] The Archdiocese of Washington became a metropolitan see on October 12, 1965, when the Diocese of Saint Thomas became its only suffragan see.

The list of bishops and their terms of service:

The archdiocese centralized school administration as part of its Center City Consortium, which was established in 1997.[33]

High schools

In addition to the nearly four dozen of its parishes which have their own cemeteries,[34] the archdiocese owns and operates five major cemeteries:[35]

• Mount Olivet Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
• Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Silver Spring, Maryland
• St. Mary's Queen of Peace Cemetery, Helen, Maryland
• Resurrection Cemetery, Clinton, Maryland
• All Souls Cemetery, Germantown, Maryland

Two former parish cemeteries are also operated by the archdiocese:

• St. John's Cemetery, Forest Glen, Maryland
• St. Mary's Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

Ecclesiastical Province of Washington map

• Diocese of Saint Thomas

• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington Official Site
• Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle
• Alphabetical Listing of Parishes Archived 2009-01-01 at the Wayback Machine