Diocese of Nashville

The faith did not easily take hold in Tennessee. In 1808, the region fell under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Bardstown, which had been newly established by Rome with Bishop Flaget appointed as its shepherd. The new diocese was huge, reaching from Tennessee to Michigan. Though Bishop Flaget personally visited Nashville in 1810, he felt inadequate in his ability to serve such a large territory and grew in his conviction that the residents in Tennessee required their own clergy to serve them. In an 1815 letter to Rome, Bishop Flaget wrote, “In the neighboring state of Tennessee there are about twenty-five families of Catholics who are deprived of the aids of the Church.” Though the Diocese of Nashville was still two decades away, momentum was finally building.

In 1820, Bishop Flaget enlisted a new priest and native Kentuckian, Father Robert Abell, to care for Tennessee as part of a broader missionary circuit, essentially establishing him as the state’s first regular Catholic missionary. Timothée Demonbreun had stayed in Nashville and remained faithful. When Fr. Abell arrived in 1820, Demonbreun welcomed him into his home where he celebrated Mass. On February 20, 1821, Demonbreun sold a plot of land north of Public Square for a church. The price? One dollar. Though the church never materialized, Demonbreun continued to host visiting clergy in his home, and the next year welcomed Bishop Flaget, who became the first bishop to celebrate Mass in Tennessee. While the French ultimately occupy only a small role in this story, the fur trapper turned community pillar stands as a poignant reminder of the Church in Tennessee’s journey from the wilderness to the forefront of community, culture, and service.

Demonbreun’s hospitality may have nurtured the seeds of a Catholic presence in Nashville, but it was the Irish who built the first church. The Nashville Bridge Company had incorporated in 1819 to build a span across the Cumberland River. Stackler and Johnson of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, brought thirty skilled Irish Catholic workers to Nashville to undertake the project. The workers, in turn, called on Bishop Flaget to send them a priest. Every few months, Fr. Abell rode ten days each way to spend time with the growing Catholic community. In turn, the Irish built him a church in their off hours. The humble, wood-framed edifice was eventually replaced with a stouter brick building. The property sat on Cedar Knob, which would eventually become Capitol Hill. Fr. Abell called it Holy Rosary.

Within five years, the bridge was completed and both the Irish workers and Fr. Abell moved on. Holy Rosary remained unfinished and unblessed, perhaps mirroring the isolation of Nashville’s few remaining Catholics, who once again had no priest. But the humble church was already serving its community, foreshadowing the diocese’s future as the space was utilized by Cumberland College (formerly Davidson Academy, Middle Tennessee’s first school). Meanwhile, an article in a Charleston, South Carolina newspaper lamented the Tennessee Catholics’ state of affairs: “It is painful to reflect on the situation of those Catholics who seek for the Bread of Life, and there are but a few to break it for them.”

The Church in Tennessee grew through these lean years with a small number of Catholics scattered across the state, served by the labor of a faithful few priests, among them Father James Cosgreve, and a settler named Hugh Rogan. The former arrived from Bardstown in 1828 and celebrated a widely publicized Mass that April. Even future U.S. President Andrew Jackson was in attendance. Cosgreve cleverly leveraged the public curiosity into a lottery that raised $10,000 for the completion of Holy Rosary. Rogan, in contrast, had faithfully nurtured the Catholics of nearby Sumner County for years by welcoming traveling priests and neighbors for Mass in his home, known as Rogana, since its construction in 1800.

At long last, the Bishop of Bardstown’s repeated appeals to reduce the size of his diocese were heeded by Rome. On July 28, 1837, the Holy See carved three new dioceses out of Bardstown: Dubuque, Natchez, and Nashville. Though official, the new Tennessee diocese had one church and no priest. Catholics were simply too few to form a distinctively Catholic culture. In turn, they adopted a uniquely southern culture, marked by temperance, moderation, and accommodation to those outside their circle. What would the new diocese become? It was simply too soon to tell.

Just as the Diocese of Nashville was established, a revered Dominican educator had just been offered the role of a lifetime. Born in Maryland and raised in Kentucky, Richard Pius Miles was an exceptional seminary student at Saint Rose of Lima Priory established by the Dominicans in Springfield, Kentucky. He later became an exemplary educator at the first Catholic college established west of the Allegheny Mountains. A school was also established for the laity by the Dominicans adjacent to the priory and dedicated to Saint Thomas Aquinas. After the school closed in 1830, Miles was sent to Ohio where he adopted the practice of the horseback missionary before being made provincial, or head of the entire Saint Joseph Province in 1837, which comprised all Dominican institutions in the United States and Canada. It was a dream posting for the priest, who was dismayed when Bishop Flaget recommended him to Rome as the bishop of the new Diocese in Nashville. Miles was convinced he was not able to provide the support required to build the new diocese and resisted the appointment. Pope Gregory XVI insisted that Miles take the job.

Few would envy the work ahead of Bishop Miles. The diocese was effectively still a frontier. Miles, consecrated a bishop in Bardstown in 1838, was the sole Catholic clergyman serving the 42,000 square miles of the state of Tennessee. Bishop Miles rode his horse, which was a gift from St. Rose upon his consecration as bishop, to Tennessee and arrived on October 14, 1838. After his first trip into the diocese visiting Murfreesboro, McMinnville, and Athens, Bishop Miles returned exhausted but encouraged to find Catholics across the state as the ever-expanding railroads nurtured small communities of Irish workers. But he was in desperate need of help and funds. Help arrived when Father Joseph Stokes, a natural historian and rector of the seminary in Cincinnati, took over travel duties for the bishop, who had become sick. Stokes traveled west to Jackson and Memphis. The increase in activity led to the arrival of new clergy, and Bishop Miles presided over the diocese’s first ordination of Father William Morgan.

To find funds, however, Bishop Miles had to travel to Europe, where the Church was well-established and sympathetic to the plight of American Catholics. Donations from organizations like the Society for the Propagation of the Faith kept the diocese afloat in those early years and provided funds to purchase land for a new cathedral. Additionally, more help arrived in 1842 in the form of six Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, whom Miles petitioned to come open a school. Saint Mary Female Academy opened in a rented house on Capitol Hill that fall. The Sisters of Charity formally left in 1851 for Leavenworth, Kansas, though six of its members chose to remain here in service.

The young diocese was taking shape. Construction on the new Cathedral began in 1844, but progress was slow, likely because of the onset of the Mexican-American War and the strains it placed on finances and availability of workers. German immigrants began to arrive in Tennessee during this time, but unlike the skilled Irish tradesmen who built the railroads, the Germans often owned businesses like bakeries and butcher shops. Their arrival deepened anti-Catholic sentiments across the diocese as the growing fundamentalist Protestant population feared a papal conspiracy to overthrow the government. Surprisingly, the war helped in this regard as many Irish enlisted to fight. Some soldiers feared the Irish would join the Mexican forces, but instead they fought fiercely for the United States. They even successfully petitioned President James K. Polk to appoint the first Catholic chaplains to the armed services. Despite the war, the cathedral (dedicated under the title of Cathedral of the Seven Dolors) was finally completed in 1847. Now known as Saint Mary of the Seven Sorrows, it was a church unlike anything Nashville had ever seen, and the long-quiet community of Catholics now held a prominent place in the city.

Progress was not limited to the city of Nashville, as the faith began to grow throughout the state. Missions and parishes were established across the miles, from Chattanooga to Knoxville to Clarksville, including Saint Michael Church in Cedar Hill, a stagecoach stop between Nashville and Clarksville. The church, which was built by four families who jointly purchased the land, is the oldest continuously operating Catholic church and dwelling in Tennessee. But nowhere was the growth more apparent than Memphis. Despite Nashville’s status as state capital, it was Memphis and its healthy trade and industry along the Mississippi River that became the state’s economic and population center. Irish workers arrived in droves to develop the riverfront and the city’s office buildings. Germans followed in short order. By the time the Cathedral opened in Nashville, there were more Catholics in Memphis, and they required churches. The first, Saint Peter, was built for the Irish, operated by the Dominicans, and is a stunning gothic structure that speaks to the wealth present in Memphis at the time. The Germans possessed numbers enough to warrant their own parish as well. Saint Mary was established with the help of the Franciscans of the mid-western Province of the Sacred Heart.

Situated only a few blocks apart, the ethnic congregations of St. Mary and St. Peter (and the future Italian congregation at St. Joseph) symbolized the new reality of the Church in America: ethnic communities, divided by language, situated side-by-side. On the one hand, it was a beautiful feature of the Catholic Church, a faith for any language and heritage. But this was America, and a uniquely American Church did not yet exist. The same was true in Nashville, where the Irish gathered at St. Mary of the Seven Sorrows and the Germans at the Church of the Assumption. The first decades of the Diocese of Nashville saw a people trying to establish a foothold in an emerging frontier, and its identity was found in the nationalities of the immigrants who constituted it. A new identity would come—and in a manner most becoming of the Catholic faith—through service.

With the nation on the brink of the Civil War, the diocese experienced a heartbreak. One day before Ash Wednesday 1860, Bishop Miles succumbed to illness. The Lenten season meant fellow bishops could not travel for the appropriate ceremonies. Instead, his successor, Bishop James Whelan, celebrated the funeral with the members of the episcopal household, and Bishop Miles was laid to rest beneath the basement of St. Mary. Perhaps the only bright spot in that era was the arrival of the Dominican Sisters, who established Saint Cecilia Academy for young women and four years later, Saint Mary Orphanage—with the assistance of Father J. A. Kelly.

Then came the Civil War. As a hub of commerce and transportation, Nashville was an occupied city, valued by the Confederacy and desired by the Union. Bishop Whelan, born in Ireland and raised in New York City, was decidedly pro-Union in belief. While his position on slavery was consistent with the Vatican, Bishop Whelan found himself isolated in the South, where most people, including most Catholics, sought to preserve their right to own slaves. Bishop Whelan, caught between two worlds, accomplished little during his tenure and was allowed to resign his position in 1863.

The fate of Bishop Whelan underscores an unfortunate reality during the Civil War: for many Catholics, their loyalties lay with the Confederacy. Father Emmeran Bliemel, for example, pastor of the Church of the Assumption, began smuggling supplies to the Confederacy after the Union Army occupied the city. Union General Rosecrans, a friend of Bishop Whelan, demanded the recall of Fr. Bliemel. Instead, the pastor followed an Irish brigade to Georgia where he was killed in 1864 while administering last rites to a fallen soldier during the Battle of Jonesboro. Despite these regretful allegiances, the Church remained focused on the community by converting St. Mary of the Seven Sorrows into a hospital and continuing to educate students, particularly girls, who remained home during the war. When Bishop Patrick Augustine Feehan arrived in 1865, he found the diocese in a “morally and financially deplorable condition.” Bishop Feehan, who first resisted his appointment due to his mother’s poor health, was focused on the care of the people. He established the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, which began to serve the area’s poor. Additionally, he welcomed orphans to live in the cathedral’s basement until the orphanage could be rebuilt. More schools were built as the Sisters of Mercy arrived in 1866 to open Saint Bernard Academy. In 1868, Bishop Feehan purchased Calvary Cemetery for $15,000, and many families relocated the remains of loved ones to the new location.

Across the state of Tennessee as settlements grew into towns and cities, Catholics were drawn together, establishing churches in Winchester, Jackson, Lawrenceburg, and Loretto. West in Memphis, the Christian Brothers started their schools for boys, and in Chattanooga, the Dominican Sisters opened Notre Dame School for Girls. Cultural festivals were established, and the Church, which once struggled to reach Catholics scattered across the state, became the center of social life. Then came yellow fever. Memphis, for all its prosperity, was regarded among the filthiest cities in America. With a contaminated water supply and animal waste in the streets, the mosquito-borne illness swept through the city. Those with the means to flee found safe haven outside the city, but the poor had no choice but to endure; Irish Catholics were among the poorest residents in the city. In the outbreak of 1873, nearly 1,000 Irish Catholics perished. But they were not alone. The Catholic clergy and nuns refused to abandon their parishioners and stayed behind to care for them and others in their time of illness. Other priests traveled from throughout the diocese to take the place of those who fell to yellow fever. By the end of the decade, more than 3,000 Catholics died in Memphis, including twenty-two priests and forty-eight nuns.

As the decade ended in tragedy, Bishop Feehan was tapped to become the first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Chicago in 1880. Three years passed until his replacement, Bishop Joseph Rademacher, was installed. Compared to the reconstruction era of Bishop Feehan, and the re-ordering of the diocese under the future Bishop Byrne, the ten years under Bishop Rademacher seem humble. Yet, the Church was hard at work, constructing thirteen new churches, five schools, two cemeteries, and three hospitals, recruiting the Franciscan Sisters of Lafayette, Indiana, to run Saint Joseph in Memphis and Saint Margaret in Nashville, and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth to open Saint Vincent in Chattanooga.

Bishop Rademacher’s most significant construction project, however, benefited the city’s burgeoning Irish population. St. Mary no longer offered sufficient capacity to function as the Cathedral. Rademacher envisioned the new St. Joseph Church, which sat on the site of the current Nashville Electric Service (NES) building, as a hub for Irish life. St. Joseph, however, was not selected to be the new Cathedral and by World War II had fallen into severe disrepair. The property was sold to NES in 1944.

A new cathedral was coming with the arrival of Bishop Thomas Sebastian Byrne. Born into a poor but faithful Catholic family in Ohio, Bishop Byrne’s mother had once hosted Father Stephen Badin, Tennessee’s first missionary priest, in their home. Compared to his contemporaries, Byrne had come to the clergy late in life, working first as a machinist. Installed as Bishop of Nashville in 1894, these skills served him well as Bishop Byrne undertook a number of changes and upgrades in the diocese.

Of first concern to Bishop Byrne were the ethnic divisions within the diocese. He imagined parishes organized by geography rather than ethnicity, and with equal services, such as a school in every parish and a hospital in every city. In 1898, he invited the Daughters of Charity to open a hospital in Nashville, which they named Saint Thomas in honor of Byrne’s patron saint. In 1905, Bishop Byrne held the first synod, or diocese-wide gathering of priests and others invited by the bishop, in Nashville to help build unity across the parishes.

Bishop Byrne was also concerned for the well-being of the city’s marginalized populations. Holy Family Church in Nashville was opened in 1900 to serve black residents. When Byrne later learned of the city council’s plan to close high schools serving black students, he called on Mother Katherine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, an order founded to serve black and Native Americans, to help open a school. The move was controversial, and the pair had to survey property for a new school through the closed curtains of a carriage. Immaculate Mother Academy opened in 1905 near the present-day Nashville Rescue Mission with twenty-eight girls enrolled. Boys were soon added, and eventually, lower grades were spun off to form Holy Family School.

In the midst of it all, Bishop Byrne purchased property for a new cathedral in 1902 for a price of $18,416. Construction of the rectory began in 1907, followed by the school building, and finally, the church itself, which was dedicated in 1914. Beautiful yet understated, the Cathedral of the Incarnation signaled the dawn of a new era for Catholics in Nashville. Coupled with the reforms during his tenure, Bishop Byrne helped establish the foundation of the Diocese of Nashville as we know it today.

Where Bishop Byrne imagined a more uniquely “Nashville” diocese, his successor, Bishop Alphonse John Smith, sought the support of a local clergy. The diocese had long reached outside itself for priests, and Smith found only a handful of native Tennesseans in their ranks. Within two years, Smith managed to recruit sixty seminarians from the state and ordained twenty-six local priests during his eleven-year tenure. With the addition of a number of schools, including Nashville’s Father Ryan High School established in 1925 as the Nashville Catholic High School for Boys to meet the need for a Catholic secondary school, Bishop Smith strengthened the Church’s presence in the community and even helped to define it. In 1924, he drew geographical boundaries for the parishes, cementing Bishop Byrne’s vision for a post-ethnic parish structure.

But a parish ultimately is not a church building or institution; it is a community of people, worshipping and serving together. As Catholic life thrived, so did the service of the laity. This strong local engagement was symbolized through the works of organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Ladies of Charity. These lay organizations embodied the Catholic spirit as they cared for the sick and helped support those in need, even bringing special gifts and joy to the children at St. Mary Orphanage at Christmas.

Catholics were good citizens, even in the face of ongoing prejudice. From its height in the 1920s, anti-Catholic sentiments abated in the unifying years after World War II until the presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy again put Catholics in the spotlight. Kennedy met his Protestant critics head-on and though he lost the state of Tennessee in the election of 1960, he forged a vision that was distinctly American.

It was in this context that the Diocese of Nashville took several major steps forward in service to the community. Bishop William Lawrence Adrian was known by his contemporaries as a “man who gets things done.” Though a number of new parishes were constructed during his tenure, among Adrian’s most lasting legacies were Saint Mary Villa, a replacement for the aging orphanage (and eventual daycare center), and the social services–focused Catholic Charities. First established to find foster homes for Cuban refugee children from the Cuban Revolution, the organization provided adoption and counseling services to families. Wherever there was need, Catholic Charities responded. During the 1970s, its Refugee Resettlement Program placed 3,000 refugees from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. During the 1980s, it opened an adult daycare program at Villa Maria Manor that served elderly and handicapped residents. Over the decades, Catholic Charities has created a support network for the Hispanic community, served AIDS patients, linked the uninsured with healthcare providers, sheltered 1,700 evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and provided essential relief in the wake of the Nashville flood of 2010 and tornado of 2020.

Where Catholic Charities was established to attend to social service needs throughout the diocese, the civil rights movement demanded a different type of leadership from Nashville’s Catholics. The Vatican was an early critic of slavery in the United States, and Catholic schools were among the first in Nashville to integrate. Sadly, however, many Christians, Protestants and Catholics alike, dismissed the African American fight for equal rights as either a legal or political issue that did not concern them. Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 and Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968 put the civil rights struggle at the center of the diocese. Its leadership had a moral obligation to respond.

Bishop Joseph Aloysius Durick led the way. A native of Dayton, Tennessee, Durick was the diocese’s first native bishop, although he was raised and ordained a priest and later an auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham. His leading role in the civil rights movement began in Alabama when Dr. King listed Durick, then a priest serving in Birmingham, among the recipients of his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Bishop Durick was moved to action and became a leading presence in marches throughout the state. He even missed Good Friday liturgy at the Cathedral in 1968 to join Dr. King in support of a black workers’ strike in Memphis. As Bishop of Nashville, he framed civil rights as a moral issue and appealed to the faithful to take a stand. In the words of John Seigenthaler, famed journalist and editor of The Tennessean, he “put the church on the cutting edge of change.” Soon Memphis would have its own bishop when the Diocese of Memphis was established in 1970, comprising the part of the state west of the Tennessee River.

While African Americans make up roughly 5 percent of the nation’s Catholic population, these strides for civil rights helped to make the diocese more welcoming to people from all walks of life. Over the last few decades, a new wave of immigration has again required the Church to minister to people in their native languages, much like the early days of the diocese. A more diverse clergy has established churches and parishes to support Vietnamese, Korean, Nigerian, Coptic Egyptian, and Indian Catholics. Representing 35 percent of American Catholics, Hispanics came to the diocese in such large numbers that they could not be served by one parish. Parishioners like Saint Philip’s Leticia Alvarez showed up for Mass even though they did not speak English. “The language is important, but the faith is more important,” Alvarez told the Tennessee Register in 2011. Today, the diocese serves the growing number of Hispanics throughout our parishes and through a number of Spanish-speaking churches, including Our Lady of Guadalupe and Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in Nashville.

As the seismic cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century settled, the diocese shifted from reacting to change to planning for its future as several leaders have worked to strengthen the mission of the Church.

In the early days of the diocese, Catholics often kept to themselves. It was not easy to make inroads in the often-hostile Protestant South. But faithful service cemented Catholic identity in Middle Tennessee.

Bishop James Daniel Niedergeses, a deeply spiritual leader, saw an opportunity. The Lawrenceburg native understood the importance of rural areas. He started the Catholic Foundation of Tennessee, a still-vital organization that works to purchase land and support new parishes in rural areas of the state.

Among the parishes in rural areas that were established under Bishop Niedergeses were Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Tennessee Ridge, 1977; Saint Francis of Assisi, Dover, 1986; Holy Family, Lafayette, 1982; Saint Gregory, Smithville, 1982; Saint Andrew, Sparta, 1978; Saint Cecilia, Waynesboro, 1982; Christ the Redeemer, Centerville, 1986; Saint Anthony, Fayetteville, 1982; and Holy Trinity, Hohenwald, 1983.

Several parishes in the suburbs of Nashville also were established while Bishop Niedergeses led the diocese, including Saint Matthew in Franklin, 1979; Saint Luke in Smyrna, 1982; and Holy Family in Brentwood in 1982.

Bishop Niedergeses also saw the creation of the Diocese of Knoxville, which finally established the Diocese of Nashville as a uniquely Middle Tennessee institution.

Bishop Edward Urban Kmiec also had his gaze set on the future. In addition to implementing a long-term strategic plan, Bishop Kmiec nurtured ordained and lay leaders alike. He developed a program to encourage renewed commitment to attracting vocations to the priesthood and embraced the Universal Church’s reinstatement of the permanent diaconate. In 2002, Bishop Kmiec presided over the dedication of Pope John Paul II High School, now Pope John Paul II Preparatory School in Hendersonville, just two years before he was named Bishop of Buffalo.

Bishop David Raymond Choby was a Nashvillian by birth whose legacy is seen through his personable leadership style. He was educated at St. Patrick, St. Edward, and the Cathedral grade schools before graduating from Father Ryan High School. Above all, Bishop Choby was revered as a nurturing mentor, known for giving his cell phone number to seminarians. This tendency to cut out the administrative hierarchy attracted new students to his seminary. He was equally available to the diaconate, whose support was vital to the daily ministry of the Church. In 2012 on the 175th anniversary, more than one hundred deacons served the diocese; Choby had ordained forty-six of them. A former student at Aquinas College, Bishop Choby was also a strong source of support for the Dominican Sisters. On February 7, 2017, an ailing Bishop Choby fell at his home, cutting his head and fracturing several vertebrae. In the following weeks, he developed an infection, and his condition declined. He passed away on June 3, 2017, and his funeral Mass was a week later at Iglesia Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in the Catholic Pastoral Center, a facility Bishop Choby had purchased in 2014 on the Feast of the Sacred Heart.

Today, the Diocese of Nashville is led by Bishop J. Mark Spalding. Like the diocese’s first shepherd, Bishop Spalding came to Nashville from Kentucky, growing up in Bardstown and serving for twenty-six years as a priest for the Archdiocese of Louisville. During his ordination and installation as bishop on February 2, 2018, Bishop Spalding told attendees, “Pray, pray to God that the love of Jesus ever increases in your heart. If you do that, not only, I believe, you save yourself, but you help save others, and that is what the Church is all about.”

These words stand as a simple but profound statement of the mission of the Diocese of Nashville. The Church is a community, a fellowship of people drawn together under the banner of a singular mission: Living and Proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, Welcoming All.

That is what brought the first missionary priests to Tennessee, and it is what fuels the diocese today: a diverse people, united under a single mission, and bound to each other in community under God.