Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson - History

History

The region which is now the Diocese of Jackson made its first contacts with the Catholic Church through French Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries during the expeditions of La Salle, Marquette, and d'Iberville in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1787, three Spanish priests, Fathers McKenna, White, and Savage, arrived at Natchez from Salamanca and erected three missions in the vicinity. These missions, however, virtually disappeared after the Spanish turned over the area to the United States, and the church's property was confiscated by secular authorities.

The diocese was originally erected as the Vicariate Apostolic of Mississippi, an administrative region of the church separate from the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas (Saint Louis of New Orleans) (to which it had previously belonged, and which itself would later become the Diocese of New Orleans), on 18 July 1826. At the head of the Vicariate was Louis-Guillaume-Valentin Dubourg, P.S.S., who served less than a year before being appointed bishop of Montauban, France (he would eventually become the archbishop of Besançon).

The Vicariate was elevated to the Diocese of Natchez on 28 July 1837, at the same time that the area of north Louisiana was made a separate diocese; the Diocese of New Orleans was not, however, elevated to an archdiocese until 1850. Although the Diocese of Natchez encompassed the entire state of Mississippi, a large geographic region, nearly three years passed before John Mary Joseph Chanche, S.S. (1795–1852), a native of Baltimore, was appointed as its first bishop on 15 December 1840. (Since 1840, however, a new bishop has regularly been appointed within a few months of the end of the previous bishop's tenure.) Bishop Chanche, like his predecessor, was of French lineage, having been born to parents who had fled to Baltimore from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), presumably during the Haitian revolution (which itself occurred at about the same time as the French Revolution). At his arrival, he found one priest in the diocese, a Father Brogard, who was there only temporarily. Chanche set to work building a diocesan infrastructure, and became reasonably well known in the church hierarchy in North America. The First Plenary Council of 1852, held in Baltimore, Maryland, records him as the "chief promoter." By the time he died later that year, he had built 11 churches, with a team of 11 priests and 13 attendant missions.

A curious series of events regarding the separation of church and state involved the Diocese of Natchez in 1864, during the American Civil War. That year, Bishop William Henry Elder refused to bend to orders from the Federal troops administering Natchez to compel his parishioners to pray for the President of the United States. For this act, Elder was tried, convicted, and then jailed briefly in Vidalia, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi River from Natchez. Nonetheless, as of 2006, Elder remains the second-longest-serving bishop in the diocese's history.

By the mid-20th century, the capital of the state of Mississippi, Jackson, had grown to perhaps be a more appropriate center for the administration of the diocese. To reflect this fact, on 18 December 1956 the name was changed to Diocese of Natchez-Jackson. Finally, on 1 March 1977, the diocese was divided, with the southern counties of Mississippi being reorganized as the Diocese of Biloxi. Concurrently, the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson became simply the Diocese of Jackson. Since the relocation of the diocese to Jackson, the Diocese of Natchez has been maintained as a titular see.