Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles - History

History

The Catholic Church presence in present-day southern California dates to the Spanish establishment of missions in what was then known as the Las Californias province of New Spain. From 1769 to 1823, the Franciscan order led by Junípero Serra and later by Fermín de Francisco Lasuén established twenty-one missions between present-day San Diego and Sonoma, six of which were located in the present-day territory of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In response to the 1781 establishment of the Pueblo de Los Angeles, in 1784 priests from Mission San Gabriel Arcángel set out for the pueblo and established the Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia as a sub-mission. The asistencia fell into disrepair after being abandoned several years later, and La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles was built on the site in 1814; the church remained the only Catholic church in Los Angeles for many years.

Las Californias was split into two provinces in 1804, and the area comprising present-day California became part of Alta California. In 1840, the Holy See erected the Diocese of the Two Californias to recognize the growth of the provinces of Alta California and Baja California. The diocese was a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Mexico with its episcopal see located in Monterey, and included all Mexican territory west of the Colorado River and the Gulf of California (the modern U.S. states of California and Nevada, and parts of Utah, Arizona, and Colorado, and the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur).

In 1848 Alta California was ceded to the United States after the Mexican-American War, and the Mexican government objected to an American bishop having jurisdiction over parishes in Mexican Baja California. The Holy See split the diocese into American and Mexican sections, and the American section was renamed the Diocese of Monterey. Another large split occurred in 1853, when much of present-day northern California, as well as present-day Nevada and Utah, formed the Archdiocese of San Francisco; Monterey became a suffragan of the new archdiocese. In 1859 the diocese became known as the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles to recognize the growth of the city of Los Angeles; the see was transferred to Los Angeles and the new Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in 1876.

On June 1, 1922 the diocese split again, this time into the Dioceses of Monterey-Fresno and Los Angeles-San Diego; Bishop John Joseph Cantwell, who had previously been Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles, became bishop of the Los Angeles-San Diego diocese, which comprised the counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. On July 11, 1936 the diocese was elevated to become the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with John Joseph Cantwell as its first archbishop; concurrently, Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties were split to form the suffragan Diocese of San Diego, and the Diocese of Monterey-Fresno was transferred to become a suffragan of the new archdiocese. On March 24, 1976 Orange County was split to form the Diocese of Orange, establishing the archdiocese's present-day territory consisting of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties.

In addition to the dioceses of Monterey, Orange, and San Diego, the archdiocese's present-day suffragan dioceses are Fresno (split from the Diocese of Monterey in 1967) and San Bernardino (split from the Diocese of San Diego in 1978).