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Diocese of Antigonish

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Diocese of Antigonish
Dioecesis Antigonicensis
Coat of arms
Coat of arms
Location
Country Canada
Ecclesiastical province Halifax–Yarmouth
Statistics
Area 18,800 km2 (7,300 sq mi)
Population
Total
Catholics 		(as of 2020)
220,300
124,400 ( 56.5%)
Information
Denomination Catholic Church
Sui iuris church Latin Church
Rite Roman Rite
Established August 23, 1886
Cathedral St. Ninian's Cathedral
Secular priests 74
Current leadership
Pope Leo XIV
Bishop Wayne Joseph Kirkpatrick
Metropolitan Archbishop Brian Joseph Dunn
Map
Website
www.antigonishdiocese.com

The Diocese of Antigonish (Latin: Dioecesis Antigonicensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in Nova Scotia, Canada. Its current diocesan ordinary is Wayne Joseph Kirkpatrick.

History

The Diocese was established on 22 September 1844, under the name of the Diocese of Arichat, on territory split off from the Diocese of Halifax. Its proto-cathedral (now Église Notre Dame de l’Assomption) was located on Cape Breton Island, in the port town of Arichat.

In both Scottish and Canadian folklore, the first ordinary of the Diocese, Bishop William Fraser of Strathglass, is a folk hero. He is said to have been a man of enormous physical strength and to have been able to break steel horseshoes with his bare hands. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, many legends have been collected of the Bishop's exploits.[1]

On 23 August 1886, the diocese was renamed the Diocese of Antigonish, and its episcopal see moved to St. Ninian's Cathedral, on the Nova Scotia mainland in the town of Antigonish.

Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the highly influential Antigonish Movement, which combined adult education, co-operatives, microfinance and rural community development to help small, resource-based villages throughout the Maritimes to improve their economic and social circumstances, was largely founded and led by a small group of Diocesan priests: Father James Tompkins, Father Moses Coady, and Fr. Hugh MacPherson.

In 1946, Scottish nationalist, folklorist, and scholar of Scottish Gaelic literature John Lorne Campbell was received into the Roman Catholic Church inside St. Ninian's Cathedral in Antigonish.[2] Campbell, along with his American-born musicologist wife, Margaret Fay Shaw, had previously collected much folklore and traditional music from Diocesan Catholics in both Canadian Gaelic and the indigenous Mi'kmaq language, which was recorded onto Ediphone wax cylinders.[3]

2009–2010 apostolic administration

On August 7, 2009, Bishop Raymond Lahey announced that the Diocese of Antigonish had reached a $15 million settlement in a class action lawsuit filed by 125 victims of sexual abuse by Hugh Vincent MacDonald and other diocese priests dating from 1950 to 2009.[4] On September 26, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Bishop Raymond Lahey, one day after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the Ottawa Police Service relating to child pornography charges (cf. sexual abuse scandal in Antigonish diocese).[5] The bishop pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was jailed.[6]

Archbishop Anthony Mancini of the Archdiocese of Halifax was named the Apostolic Administrator effective September 26, 2009, and remained in that position until the installation of Brian Dunn on January 25, 2010.[7]

Extent

The Diocese of Antigonish covers 18,800 square kilometers, comprising the counties of Pictou, Antigonish, Guysborough, Inverness, Victoria, Richmond and Cape Breton.

As of 2006, the diocese contained 123 parishes, 119 active diocesan priests, 8 religious priests, and 129,905 Catholics. It also has 290 women religious, 12 religious brothers and 1 permanent deacon. In 2012 in order to satisfy its legal obligations to pay out $15 million to the victims of sexual abuse, the diocese had to sell a large number of its lands and properties, liquidating the bank accounts of many of its churches, and borrowing $6.5 million from private lenders to make the payout.[8]

Until 2015, the Bishop of Antigonish served ex officio as Chancellor of St. Francis Xavier University.

Bishops

Bishops of Arichat
Bishops of Antigonish
Other priests of this diocese who became bishops

In Canadian literature

45°37′12″N 61°59′37″W / 45.6201°N 61.9935°W

Canonical status and jurisdiction

Diocese of Antigonish is a diocese of the catholic church of the Catholic Church.[14]

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Diocese of Antigonish — (Micmac, nalagitkooneech, "where the branches are torn off")

Antigonish is the shiretown of the county of the same name in Nova Scotia. On the 23d of August, 1886, it was made the see of one of the dioceses constituting the ecclesiastical province of Halifax. The first see was Arichat. The diocese takes in the three easternmost counties of Nova Scotia proper, with the whole island of Cape Breton. Up to 1817, Nova Scotia formed a part of the Diocese of Quebec; in that year it was erected into a vicariate, and the Right Rev. Edmund Burke appointed vicar Apostolic. He was succeeded, in 1827, by the Right Rev. William Fraser. On the 21st of September, 1844, the vicariate was divided, and two dioceses were formed, the sees being Halifax and Arichat. Bishop Fraser was appointed to the latter see. An alumnus of the Scottish College at Valladolid, he was a strong man, physically and mentally fitted to play the part of pioneer missionary bishop. He died 4 October, 1851, and was succeeded, 27 February, 1852, by the Right Rev. Colin Francis MacKinnon, D.D., a graduate of Propaganda He was a man of apostolic zeal, and of singularly amiable character. Failing health led him to resign, 19 January, 1877, when his coadjutor, the Right Rev. John Cameron, D.D., also a graduate of Propaganda, and consecrated at Rome, 22 May, 1870, became administrator of the diocese. On his resigning this charge, Bishop MacKinnon was made titular Archbishop of Amida. He died two years later, 26 September, 1879.

Within the Diocese of Antigonish is the historic town of Louisbourg. As far back as 1604 French priests were in Nova Scotia, then known as Acadie, or Acadia. Between that date and the taking of Louisbourg by the English in 1758, the indefatigable missionaries of France busied themselves with the evangelization of the native Micmacs. The fact that the whole tribe still hold fast the faith preached to them, despite the efforts made from time to time to rob them of it and the paucity of priestly labourers in the fifty years that followed the fall of Louisbourg, attests the thoroughness with which the early Recollet and Jesuit Fathers did their work. Till the closing years of the eighteenth century, some hundreds of the aborigines, together with a remnant of the first French settlers, known as Acadians, and a few Irish families, made up the Catholic population of what is now the Diocese of Antigonish. In 1791, the first party of Catholic immigrants from the Scottish Highlands reached Pictou in two ships. Driven from their native braes and glens by the rapacity of the landlords, who turned their ancestral holdings into sheepwalks, they found new homes and free holdings in the wild woods of Nova Scotia. From this time forward the tide of Scottish immigration gathered strength, until it reached its highest point in 1817. In July, 1802, about 1,500 Highland Scottish Catholics were settled along the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For the greater part of the time they were without a priest, save for the occasional visits of the Rev. Angus Bernard MacEachern afterwards Bishop of Charlottetown, P. E. I., who braved the perils of the sea in an open boat to bring them the consolations of religion. In the same year two priests came out from Scotland, and these in time were followed by others. They shared with their people the hardships incident to pioneer life in "the forest primeval." Among the priests who laboured during the first two decades of the nineteenth century in the territory now comprised in the Diocese of Antigonish were Abbé Lejamtel, among the Acadians; the Reverends Alexander MacDonnel, William Chisholm, and Colin Grant, in the Scottish settlements on the mainland; the Reverend James Grant, an Irish priest, in Antigonish; the Reverend Alexander MacDonnell in the Scottish settlements in Cape Breton, and Father Vincent, founder of the Trappist Monastery at Tracadie, among the Micmacs and Acadians. The last-named, known in the Gaelic-speaking communities as A Sagart Ban, or White Priest, from the flowing white robe of his Order, which he wore also on his missionary journeys, was a man of singularly holy life. The first session of the court, appointed in 1905 to inquire into his title to sainthood, was held in June, 1906.

St. Francis Xavier's College, established at Antigonish in 1855, and endowed with university powers in 1866, is the chief seat of learning. Mt. St. Bernard, an academy for young ladies, conducted by the Sisters of Notre Dame, is affiliated to St. Francis Xavier's. The Sisters of Notre Dame have eight other convents within the diocese; the Sisters of Charity, six; the Daughters of Jesus, lately come from France, four; the Sisters of St. Martha, one. The Trappists, at Petit Clairvaux, Tracadie, are the only religious order of men. In 1871, the Catholic population was 62,853; in 1891, it was 73,500, of whom about 42,000 were Highland Scotch, 19,000 French, 11,000 Irish, and 1,500 Micmacs. The present population is in the neighbourhood of 80,000. There are 101 priests, including 11 Trappists, 67 churches with resident pastors, and 34 missions with churches.

O'BRIEN (late Archbishop of Halifax), Memoirs of Bishop Burke (Ottawa, 1894); MACMILLAN, History of the Catholic Church in Prince Edward island (Quebec, 1905); BROWN, History of Cape Breton (London, 1869); BOURINOT, Cape Breton, and its Memorials (Montreal, 1892); MACLEOD, History of the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in North America (Cincinnati, 1860. - This work contains an eloquent chapter on the Highland Scottish emigration); MACGILLIVRAY, The Casket (files); Xaverian, Golden Jubilee Number (Oct. 1905).

ALEXANDER MACDONALD.

References

  1. Back to citation Effie Rankin (2004), As a' Braighe/Beyond the Braes: The Gaelic Songs of Allan the Ridge MacDonald, Cape Breton University Press. Pages 169-170.
  2. Back to citation Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 115-116.
  3. Back to citation Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 63-68.
  4. Back to citation "More church properties for sale to cover cost of sex-abuse deal". CBC News. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
  5. Back to citation "CBC News - Nova Scotia - N.S. bishop wanted on child porn charges". Archived from the original on 2009-10-02.
  6. Back to citation Charge against Kansas City bishop the temper of the times, by John L Allen Jr, Oct. 15, 2011, National Catholic Reporter
  7. Back to citation occurrence 7.0 Back to citation occurrence 7.1 "New N.S. bishop named to replace Lahey". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  8. Back to citation "Diocese of Antigonish starts church review". The Chronicle Herald. 2014-04-14. Retrieved 2017-12-05; "More church properties for sale to cover cost of sex-abuse deal". CBC News. Retrieved 2017-12-05; "Antigonish diocese to sell hundreds of properties". CBC News. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
  9. Back to citation Flemming, David B. (1985). "Fraser, William". In Halpenny, Francess G. (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. VIII (1851–1860) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  10. Back to citation MacLean, R. A. (1972). "MacKinnon, Colin Francis". In Hayne, David (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. X (1871–1880) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  11. Back to citation MacLean, R. A. (1994). "Cameron, John". In Cook, Ramsay; Hamelin, Jean (eds.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. XIII (1901–1910) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  12. Back to citation Effie Rankin (2004), As a' Braighe/Beyond the Braes: The Gaelic Songs of Allan the Ridge MacDonald, Cape Breton University Press. Pages 110-115, 169-170.
  13. Back to citation Effie Rankin (2004), As a' Braighe/Beyond the Braes: The Gaelic Songs of Allan the Ridge MacDonald, Cape Breton University Press. Pages 169-170.
  14. Back to citation Diocese of Antigonish, official website

Bibliography

MacDonald, Alexander (1907). "Diocese of Antigonish". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

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