James Roosevelt Bayley - First Bishop of Newark

First Bishop of Newark

On October 30, 1853 Bayley was consecrated the first bishop of the Diocese of Newark. Bayley's mission for the fledgling Diocese was to establish Catholic education as he said, "In our present position, the schoolhouse has become second in importance to the House of God itself ... ... every Catholic child in the state in a Catholic school."

Bayley realized that in order to be effective in his mission he needed the help of a Diocesan community; as he put it, "no one can fill that most important office so effectually as religious women." In 1857 a group of Benedictine Sisters arrived from Pennsylvania and in the following year Bayley sent five women to train with the Sisters of Charity. Many other communities of religious men and women joined the Diocese in the next decades.

When the Diocese of Newark was established he was named its first bishop and consecrated 30 October 1853, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, by Archbishop Gaetano Bedini, the Apostolic Nuncio to Brazil, who was then en route to Rome. The Bishops of Brooklyn and Burlington were consecrated at the same time, the first occurrence of such an elaborate ceremony in the United States. Bishop Bayley's work of organizing the new diocese was not easy. He had more than 40,000 Catholics, mainly of Irish and German extraction, with only twenty-five priests to minister to them. There was not a single diocesan institution, no funds, and poverty on all sides. He therefore applied for help to the Association of the Propagation of the Faith of Lyons, France, and to the Leopoldine Association of Vienna and from both received material assistance.

Bishop Bayley saw need for a Catholic college, and on September 1, 1856 the need was filled by the opening of Chegary Academy (Old Seton Hall) in Madison. In 1860 the school moved to its present location in South Orange and was incorporated into a college by the state of New Jersey in 1861. The College also had a seminary which was necessary for educating new priests. Despite the original need, the number of new recruits exceeded the abilities of the seminary. Bayley was instrumental in the founding of the North American College in Rome at the request of Pope Pius IX, where he sent a young seminarian by the name of Michael Corrigan.

In a letter he wrote April 10, 1865, reviewing the condition of the diocese after his first ten years there he says:

I find that while the Catholic population has increased a third, the churches and priests have doubled in number. In 1854 there was no religious community. Now we have a monastery of Benedictines, another of Passionists, a mother-house of Sisters of Charity, conducting seventeen different establishments; two convents of Benedictine nuns, two others of German Sisters of Notre Dame and two others of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis. In 1854 there was no institution of learning; to-day we have a flourishing college and a diocesan seminary, an academy for young ladies, a boarding school for boys, and parish schools attached to almost all the parishes.

In addition to these he introduced the Jesuits and the Sisters of St. Joseph and of St. Dominic into the diocese, and was one of the strongest upholders of the temperance movement of the seventies. He made several journeys to Rome and the Holy Land, attending the canonization of the Japanese martyrs at Rome in 1862; the centenary of the Apostles in 1867; and the ecumenical Council in 1869.

Bishop Bayley served the developing Diocese for 19 years until he was appointed Archbishop of Baltimore on July 30, 1872.