Roman Catholic Diocese of Little Rock

The Diocese of Little Rock (Dioecesis Petriculana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church for Arkansas in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

The Diocese of Little Rock was established on November 28, 1843. The seat of the diocese is the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.

1800 to 1843
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the present-day area of Arkansas was transferred from France to the United States. At that time, the area was part of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, a vast diocese covering most of the region. The US Government established the Arkansas Territory in 1819. The first Catholic missionary in Arkansas was the diocesan bishop, Louis Dubourg, who visited the Osage Nation in 1820.

In 1826, the Arkansas area and the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) became part of the Diocese of St. Louis. Lazarist missionaries from Saint Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville, Missouri had started arriving in Arkansas in 1824 to minister to Native American converts and European settlers. Richard Bole established St. Mary's Mission near Pine Bluff. In 1836, Arkansas became a state. In 1838, Bole brought in five Sisters of Loretto from St. Geneviève, Missouri, who opened the first Catholic school in Arkansas.

1843 to 1867
Pope Gregory XVI erected the Diocese of Little Rock in 1843, including all of Arkansas and the Indian Territory. Reverend Andrew Byrne of the Archdiocese of New York was consecrated as its the first bishop in 1844. When Byrne arrived, most of the resident priests had left the diocese and the Catholic population was around 1,000. In 1845, he constructed the first cathedral in Little Rock. The first Catholic church in Fort Smith, Immaculate Conception, was built in 1848.

In the late 1840s, Byrne persuaded the Sisters of Mercy in Naas, Ireland to send 13 nuns to Arkansas. In 1850, the nuns established St. Mary's Academy in Little Rock. During the American Civil War, construction of new facilities by the diocese came to a halt. Byrne died in 1862. The diocese remained without a bishop for the next five years. The vicar general, Peter Joseph O'Reilly, operated the diocese during this gap.

1867 to 1900
The second bishop of Little Rock was Edward Fitzgerald from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, named by Pope Pius IX in 1867.

At that time, the diocese had four parishes, five priests, and a Catholic population of 1600. The succeeding decades brought streams of European immigrants to the state:
 * Benedictine monks from St. Meinrad, Indiana came in 1876 to Logan County to serve a growing German population.
 * The Holy Ghost Fathers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1879 started ministering to German colonies near Morrilton.
 * A Polish parish was set up at Marche in 1880
 * The diocese started serving Italian congregations in Sunnyside, Tontitown, New Gascony, and Barton.

In 1891, the Vatican stripped the Indian Territory out of the Diocese of Little Rock, creating the Apostolic Vicariate of the Indian Territory. In 1894, Fitzgerald dedicated the first church in Arkansas for African-Americans at Pine Bluff, where the diocese had previously established an industrial school for that group.

1900 to 1946
In 1906, Pope Pius X named John B. Morris of the Diocese of Nashville as coadjutor bishop to assist Fitzgerald. He was the first native Tennessean to be elevated to the Catholic episcopacy. Upon the death of Fitzgerald in 1907, Morris automatically succeeded him as the third bishop of Little Rock.

Morris opened Little Rock College for Boys in 1908 at a cost of $50,000. He also opened St. Joseph's Orphanage in North Little Rock, which was completed at a cost of $150,000 and placed under the care of the Benedictine Sisters, in 1910. He presided over the first diocesan synod in February 1909, and established the first school for Catholic teachers during the following June. In 1911, Morris founded St. John Home Missions Seminary at Little Rock College; he considered it as his greatest accomplishment. That same year, he established the diocesan newspaper, The Southern Guardian. Morris erected separate parishes for African Americans in El Dorado, Fort Smith, Helena, Hot Springs, Lake Village, Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Pine Bluff; Morris also opened an African-American orphanage at Pine Bluff. He founded a school for boys near Searcy under the care of Poor Brothers of St. Francis, as well as a school for delinquent girls run by the Good Shepherd Sisters in Hot Springs.

Morris was confronted with a resurgence of anti-Catholicism early in his tenure, and during World War I many German American Catholics and German-speaking priests in Arkansas found themselves under suspicion. Morris, who was strongly patriotic and sold bonds during the war, helped mitigate such bigotry through his friendship with Arkansas Governor Joseph Robinson. Despite the financial hardships of the Great Depression, Morris raised $20,000 to purchase an organ for St. Andrew's Cathedral. Morris opened Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock in 1930. He publicly condemned anti-Semitism following the Kristallnacht attacks in Germany in November 1938. Morris died in 1946.

1946 to 2000
Pope Pius XII appointed Auxiliary Bishop Albert Fletcher as the next bishop of Little Rock in 1946. He was a staunch advocate of racial desegregation, supporting the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Fletcher reprimanded Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus for attempting to prevent court-ordered racial desegregation at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. In a 1960 publication entitled "An Elementary Catholic Catechism on the Morality of Segregation and Racial Discrimination", Fletcher described racial segregation as "immoral ... unjust and uncharitable", and stated that it could even constitute mortal sin "when the act of racial prejudice committed is a serious infraction of the law of justice or charity".

Although Fletcher in 1964 inaugurated the liturgical use of the vernacular in his diocese, as prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, he did not follow the council's advice on creating permanent deacons. Fletcher closed St. John Seminary in Little Rock in 1967 after some of its faculty publicly questioned the church's stance on birth control and papal infallibility. Fletcher retired as bishop of Little Rock in 1972.

The next bishop of Little Rock was Andrew McDonald from the Diocese of Savannah, named by Pope Paul VI in 1972. McDonald instituted permanent deacons in the diocese, largely because of the shortage of priests. He established an anti-abortion office in the diocesan curia and led the annual March for Life each January in Little Rock. In 1982, McDonald invited Mother Teresa to open a home for single mothers in Little Rock. He reached out to other denominations in Arkansas throughout his tenure, and once assisted in promoting a Billy Graham crusade at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in 1989. McDonald retired in 2000.

2000 to present
Pope John Paul II in 2000 named J. Peter Sartain of the Diocese of Memphis as the next bishop of Little Rock. Due to the increasing Hispanic population in Arkansas, Sartain established Hispanic ministries throughout the state. He also ordained Arkansas's first Mexican-born priest and deacon. He worked to increase vocations; the diocese had ten seminarians and no ordinations in 2000, but fifteen seminarians and two ordinations in 2005. In 2005, Sartain led more than 5,000 Catholics in a bilingual Eucharistic Congress. During his tenure, the Catholic population in Arkansas rose from 90,600 to over 107,000. Sartain was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois in 2006.

As of 2023, the current bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa is Anthony B. Taylor, named by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. Taylor that year became the first American bishop to join the social media website Facebook.

In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican announced that six nuns in the diocese had been excommunicated for heresy, the first instances in diocese history. The women had refused to recant the doctrines of the Community of the Lady of All Nations (Army of Mary). The sect believed that its founder, Marie Paule Giguere, was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.

Following the issuance of Pope Francis's July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes, Taylor announced that the diocese would no long offer the Tridentine Mass at its parishes. Taylor permitted its continued celebration at two personal parishes operated by priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter.

Reports of sex abuse
In September 2018, the Diocese of Little Rock released a "preliminary" list of eight diocesan priests who were "credibly accused" of engaging in sex abuse of minors. Taylor acknowledged the history of abuse in the diocese and issued an apology. The list also contained the names of four additional priests transferred by other dioceses to Little Rock to avoid sexual abuse allegations.


 * Paul Haas had multiple sexual abuse accusations from the Diocese of Nashville before going to Little Rock.
 * Anthony McCay had ten alleged victims in several other states before his transfer to Little Rock in 1991.
 * Francis Zimmer was transferred to the diocese in 1960, despite reports that he had molested three minors while serving in Texas.

Most of the men on the list were deceased at the time of its release. Most of the priests began serving in the diocese before the 1980s. Donald Althoff, ordained in 1982 and removed from ministry in 1995, was the only priest ordained after the 1980s. The earliest priest on the list who committed abuse in the diocese was Edward Mooney, laicized in 1974.

In July 2019, the diocese paid $790,000 to five victims of John McDaniel. McDaniel committed the alleged abuse while serving as an associate pastor at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church in Little Rock. He died in 1974.

In August 2019, another alleged victim filed a lawsuit against the diocese and St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Tontitown. The plaintiff accused Joseph Correnti of sexual abuse between 1995 and 2002. Correnti killed himself in 2002. A man sued the diocese in April 2023, saying that he had been sexually abused in 1981 by Richard Davis, who died in 2020. Davis allegedly fondled the plaintiff at night during a weeklong training program for altar boys.

Bishops of Little Rock

 * 1) Andrew Byrne (1843-1862)
 * 2) Edward Fitzgerald (1866-1907)
 * 3) John Baptist Morris (1907-1946; coadjutor bishop 1906–1907)
 * 4) Albert Lewis Fletcher (1946-1972)
 * 5) Andrew Joseph McDonald (1972-2000)
 * 6) J. Peter Sartain (2000-2006), appointed Bishop of Joliet in Illinois and later Archbishop of Seattle
 * 7) Anthony Basil Taylor (2008–present)

Auxiliary bishops

 * Albert Lewis Fletcher (1939-1946), appointed Bishop of Little Rock
 * Lawrence Preston Joseph Graves (1969-1973), appointed Bishop of Alexandria

Other diocesan priests who became bishops

 * Francis Ignatius Malone, appointed Bishop of Shreveport in 2019
 * Erik T. Pohlmeier, appointed Bishop of St. Augustine in 2022

Education
In 2013, there were 6,913 students in Catholic schools in the Diocese of Little Rock. In the 1960s, there were 11,500 students in the diocese; this was the peak enrollment. During that decade, ten of the Catholic schools in the diocese were for black people. None of those schools remained open by 2013.

High schools

 * Catholic High School for Boys – Little Rock (All-Boys)
 * Mount St. Mary Academy – Little Rock (All-Girls)
 * Sacred Heart School – Morrilton
 * St. Joseph School – Conway
 * Ozark Catholic Academy – Tontitown - Founded in 2018 as an Independent Catholic High School. The first Catholic High School in the Northwest Arkansas Area.
 * Subiaco Academy – Subiaco (All-Boys)

Primary schools

 * Blessed Sacrament Catholic School - Jonesboro
 * Christ the King Catholic School – Little Rock
 * Holy Souls Catholic School – Little Rock
 * Immaculate Conception Catholic School – North Little Rock
 * Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic School – North Little Rock
 * North Little Rock Catholic Academy – Formed in 2007 by the merger of St. Mary School and St. Patrick School.
 * St. John Catholic School – Russellville
 * St. Joseph Catholic School – Fayetteville
 * St. Paul Catholic School – Pocahontas
 * St. Theresa Catholic School – Little Rock
 * St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School – Rogers

Defunct high schools

 * St. Bartholomew High School – Little Rock – A majority black school, closed 1964
 * St. Joseph Catholic School – Pine Bluff – Grades 5–12, opened in 1993, closed 2013
 * St. Peter's Catholic School – Grades Preschool through 6 – The first school in Arkansas for black children to be established, was established in 1889 by the pastor of St. Joseph Church, John Michael Lucey, as the Colored Industrial Institute and in 1897 became St. Peter Academy a.k.a. St. Peter High School. It closed in 1975, and reopened as an elementary school operated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1985. At the time of its closure in 2012, it was the last Catholic school established for black students in Arkansas.

Defunct primary schools

 * Good Shepherd School – Conway – majority black school, closed 1965
 * Holy Redeemer School – El Dorado, closed 2005
 * Immaculate Conception School – Blytheville, closed 2007
 * Our Lady of Good Counsel School – Little Rock,closed 2006
 * St. Augustine School – North Little Rock, majority black school, closed 1976
 * St. Bartholomew School – Little Rock, majority black school, closed 1974
 * St. Cyprian School – Helena, majority black school, closed 1963
 * St. Gabriel School – Hot Springs, majority black school, closed 1968
 * St. John the Baptist School – Fort Smith, majority black school, closed 1968
 * St. Raphael School – Pine Bluff, majority black school, closed 1960
 * St. Raphael School – Springdale, closed 2013