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Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque

Coordinates: 42°29′06″N 90°40′31″W / 42.48500°N 90.67528°W / 42.48500; -90.67528
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Metropolitan Archdiocese of Dubuque

Archidiœcesis Metropolitae Dubuquensis
St. Raphael's Cathedral
Coat of arms
Location
CountryUnited States
Territory30 counties in Northeastern Iowa
Ecclesiastical provinceDubuque
Coordinates42°29′06″N 90°40′31″W / 42.48500°N 90.67528°W / 42.48500; -90.67528
Statistics
Area17,400 sq mi (45,000 km2)
Population
- Total
- Catholics		(as of 2018[1])
1,010,471
193,360 (19.1%)
Parishes166
Information
DenominationCatholic
Sui iuris churchLatin Church
RiteRoman Rite
EstablishedJuly 28, 1837 (187 years ago)
CathedralSt. Raphael's Cathedral
Patron saintSt. Raphael
St. John Vianney[2]
Current leadership
PopeFrancis
ArchbishopThomas Robert Zinkula
Metropolitan ArchbishopThomas Robert Zinkula
Bishops emeritusJerome Hanus, O.S.B.
Michael Owen Jackels
Map
Website
dbqarch.org

The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Dubuque (Latin: Archidiœcesis Metropolitae Dubuquensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the northeastern quarter of the state of Iowa in the United States.

It includes all the Iowa counties north of Polk, Jasper, Poweshiek, Iowa, Johnson, Cedar, and Clinton counties, and east of Kossuth, Humboldt, Webster and Boone counties. The archdiocese has an area of about 17,400 square miles (45,000 km2).

It was founded as a diocese in 1837 and elevated to an archdiocese in 1893. In 1947, William Menster of the archdiocese became the first priest to set foot on Antarctica. Starting in the 1990s the archdiocese faced sexual abuse scandal.

The Archdiocese of Dubuque is a metropolitan archdiocese. There are three suffragan dioceses in the ecclesiastical province under Dubuque's metropolitan archbishop: the Dioceses of Davenport, Des Moines, and Sioux City.[1]

Background

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The seat of the archdiocese is St. Raphael's Cathedral, Dubuque, named in honor of the Archangel Raphael.

The current Archbishop of Dubuque is Thomas Robert Zinkula.[3]

The Archdiocese of Dubuque is one of only a handful of US archdioceses not based in a major metropolitan area. The archdiocese contains 199 parishes and has three Catholic colleges: Loras College and Clarke University in Dubuque and Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids.

A number of religious orders maintain a presence in the archdiocese. Notable orders include the Trappist monastery New Melleray Abbey (male) southwest of Dubuque,[4] and the Trappistine monastery Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey (female) south of Dubuque. The archdiocese is also home to the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Basilica of St. Francis Xavier is located in the archdiocese, located in Dyersville, about 25 miles (40 km) west of Dubuque.

History

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Early years

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The first Catholic presence in present-day Iowa was that of the French Jesuit missionary, Reverend Jacques Marquette, who traveled down the Mississippi River with the explorer Louis Joliet in 1673 to what is now Montrose, Iowa.[5] The region would be under French and Spanish control for the next 131 years.

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the region passed from French to American control. The few Catholics in the area were originally under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. In 1826, the Iowa area was transferred to the new Diocese of St. Louis. It would remain under iits the jurisdiction for the next 11 years.

The earliest Catholic settlers in the region were French-Canadian, German, and Irish. With the growth of the Catholic population grew, Bishop Joseph Rosati of St. Louis in 1833 sent the Belgian Jesuit Reverend Charles Van Quickenborne to Dubuque, where he organized the first parish.[6] He was followed in 1834 by Reverend Father Charles Francis Fitzmaurice, who began amassing funds to construct a church. When Fitzmaurice died of cholera in early 1835, Rosatis sent the Dominican Reverend Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli to replace him. [7]

Mazzuchelli ministered to a scattered Catholic population of under 3,000.[7] In 1835, he dedicated the first church in the parish, which he named St. Raphael.[6]

Pope Gregory XVI erected the Diocese of Dubuque on July 28, 1837, and named Monsignor Mathias Loras from the Diocese of Mobile as its first bishop.[7] This vast diocese covered the entire Iowa Territory along with what became the Minnesota Territory (including North and South Dakota).

Gathering funds and personnel in Alabama, Loras arrived in Dubuque in 1839. He designated St. Raphael as the cathedral parish later that year. Loras encouraged immigration to the area, especially German and Irish settlers.[7] He oversaw the creation of new parishes and invited several religious orders to the area. In 1849, with Ireland ravaged by the Great Famine, several Irish Cistercian monks immigrated to Iowa to build the New Melleray Abbey in Peosta.[4]

In 1850, Pope Pius IX separated the Minnesota Territory from the Diocese of Dubuque to form the new Diocese of St. Paul. Shortly before Loras' death in 1858, he directed the construction of the current St. Raphael's Cathedral.

Expansion and elevation

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In 1858, Bishop Smyth established St. Francis Catholic Church in Balltown. Clement Smyth, OCSO served as bishop from February 1858 to September 1865 and oversaw continued expansion of the Catholic Church in the diocese. During his episcopacy the German Catholics of the city of Dubuque began construction of a new St. Mary's church to replace the too-small Church of the Holy Trinity.

In 1863, Smyth learned of the existence of the pro-Southern Knights of the Golden Circle, with headquarters in Dubuque. He gave members who might be Catholic two weeks to withdraw from the organization or be automatically excommunicated.[8]

After Smyth died in 1865, John Hennessey succeeded him as Bishop of Dubuque. During Hennessey's tenure, the population of Dubuque exploded as the Milwaukee Railroad Shops came to the city. Hennessey created several parishes in Dubuque: Sacred Heart, Holy Ghost, St. Anthony's, and Holy Trinity to deal with this population explosion. During this time, Hennessey proposed separating territory from the diocese to create a new diocese for southern Iowa. While he proposed Des Moines as the seat of the new diocese, Pope Leo XIII selected Davenport as the site.

Nicholas E. Gonner (1835–1892), a Catholic immigrant from Luxembourg, founded the Catholic Publishing Company of Dubuque. His son Nicholas E. Gonner (1835–1892) took over in 1892, editing two German language weeklies, an English language weekly, and the Daily Tribune, the only Catholic daily newspaper ever published in the United States.[9]

On June 15, 1893, Pope Leo XIII elevated the Diocese of Dubuque to the Archdiocese of Dubuque and Hennessey became the first archbishop. Hennessey died in 1900 and was buried at the cathedral.[citation needed]

Early 20th century

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After the death of Hennessey, Archbishop John J. Keane led the archdiocese for eleven years until poor health forced him to retire in 1911. During his tenure, the archdiocese lost its western territory to form the Diocese of Sioux City and achieved its current size.

Archbishop Hennessy

The Great Depression and World War II

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During the years of the Great Depression and World War II, Archbishop Francis J.L. Beckman occupied the see. In the years leading up to the war, Beckman opposed military action. A collector of fine art pieces, he had placed a number of art pieces in a museum at Columbia (now Loras) College and perhaps, thinking he could gain funds to further his collection, involved the archdiocese in what turned out to be a dubious gold mine scheme. Beckman signed notes on behalf of the archdiocese, which suffered a loss of more than $500,000 when the scheme fell apart and the perpetrator of the scheme (Phillip Suetter, of California) was arrested.US President Franklin Roosevelt directed the FBI to investigate Beckman to determine his role in the financial scheme. Most of Beckman's collection was sold to pay the notes.

Because of Beckman's troubles, Bishop Henry Rohlman returned from the Davenport, Iowa, diocese to become coadjutor archbishop in 1944. Beckman was allowed to retain his office, but was informed that Rohlman now led the archdiocese. Beckman retired in 1947, and left Dubuque for Cincinnati.

Postwar era

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One of the effects of the post-war baby boom was an increase in the number of students at some Catholic schools. In Dubuque, the Sacred Heart parish school had the largest student population of such schools in the midwest. On December 2, 1954, Archbishop Leo Binz succeeded Archbishop Rohlman as Archbishop of Dubuque and served in that capacity until December 16, 1961, when he became archbishop of Saint Paul.

Second Vatican Council and the aftermath

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James Byrne was named the next archbishop of Dubuque on March 7, 1962, and was formally installed at St. Raphael's on May 8, 1962. He attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Byrne implemented the changes brought about by the council in the Archdiocese of Dubuque and quickly established the Priests Senate, a clergy advisory board, as well as another advisory board dealing with assignment of priests. These were among the first such boards founded in the United States. Byrne retired from office on August 23, 1983, and remained in Dubuque until his death August 2, 1996.

Late 20th-early 21st centuries

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On February 23, 1984, Daniel William Kucera, OSB, was installed as the tenth bishop and eighth archbishop of Dubuque. Kucera had earned a doctorate in education. At 36, he had become the youngest president of St. Procopius College (now known as Benedictine University). His background in education led Vatican officials, including the pope, to seek his advice.

During Kucera's tenure as archbishop, he remodeled St. Raphael's Cathedral, revised and published the guidelines for the sacrament of Confirmation, reduced the number of deaneries from 16 to 14, reorganized the structure of the archdiocese and created an archbishop's cabinet to coordinate administration of the archdiocese.

In 1987, Kucera also launched a plan that divided the archdiocese into three regions with a resident bishop in each. The Dubuque Region was served by retired Archbishop James Byrne and Archbishop Kucera; the Cedar Rapids Region by Bishop Francis Dunn, and Waterloo Region by William Franklin who was consecrated as a bishop in April 1987. However, Bishop Kucera eventually dropped the plan after the death of Bishop Dunn in 1989 and Bishop Franklin's nomination as the head of the Diocese of Davenport.

In 1986 the archdiocese celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding; Kucera received an honorary degree from the University of Dubuque. On October 16, 1995, Kucera retired, moved to Aurora, Colorado, and then subsequently returned to live in Dubuque.

Early parishes

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St. John the Baptist

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In July 1874 Bishop John Hennessy granted permission to build a church at Centralia. The cornerstone was laid in the Fall of 1874; and George W. Heer was appointed the first pastor of the parish on Sept. 1, 1875. When the railroad came through Peosta, then Archbishop John Joseph Keane deemed it advisable to move St. John the Baptist parish from Centralia to Peosta in 1923. During the winter, parishioners would travel to services by horse-drawn bobsled.[10]

In 1989 a new St. John's Church was dedicated. St. John the Baptist is part of the parish was clustered with the 4 parishes of St. Elizabeth Pastorate, a cluster of five parishes sharing offices and facilities.[10]

St. Francis

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St. Francis Catholic Church in Balltown traces its history to 1858 when a number of area residents petitioned Bishop Loras to establish a Catholic parish in the area. Loras came and offered Mass in a log cabin near Balltown.[11]

Residents gathered the funds to build a church and school. In 1891, local resident Andreas Rapp and his wife donated some land, which allowed for the construction of a brick building containing a school and a convent for the sisters, as well as the establishment of a cemetery. The school opened in September of that year with 45 children attending. Mass was celebrated in a small sanctuary adjoining the schoolroom.[11]

Local resident, Peter Cremer, donated land for a church, and in 1892 the cornerstone for St. Francis Church building was laid. The building would serve the parish until August 27, 1976, when lightning struck the steeple, causing a fire which destroyed the church building. In the aftermath a new St. Francis Church was constructed, while the old convent building was torn down to make room for the new church.[11]

The parish is part of the St. John Baptist de La Salle Pastorate, a cluster of several other rural parishes in northern Dubuque County, Iowa, that share a pastor and other facilities.

Ss. Peter and Paul

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Saints Peter and Paul Church –Sherrill

The parish of Saints Peter and Paul was founded in 1852 as St. William's. Prior to this, residents living in the Sherrill area needed to travel by ox-team to Dubuque about 15 miles away to attend Mass, a considerable distance at the time. In response to the need for a local church to accommodate the heavy German Catholic immigration to the rural districts surrounding Sherrill, Dubuque Bishop Mathias Loras established the parish.[12]

By the 1860s the name of Saints Peter and Paul had been adopted, and in 1889 the original wooden church was replaced by a large, brick and stone Romanesque Revival structure, which remains in use today.[12] During the 1970s, the church's original carved wood altars were removed and its 19th-century wood trim was painted over. Inscriptions on the church's stained glass windows and on the older headstones in its adjoining cemetery are in German, reflecting the culture of the parish's founding members.

Stained glass panel at Saints Peter and Paul Church. Was donated by Catharina Gansemer (1824–1904), an early parishioner. "Geschenk von" means "gift of".

For well over 100 years the parish school was operated by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and many girls of the parish who felt a calling to religious life joined that order. The school is still operated on the premises of the parish by the Archdiocese of Dubuque, as a consolidation of the original school and the Catholic school which once served the nearby community of Balltown, Iowa.

The parish is part of a St. John Baptist de La Salle Pastorate, cluster of rural parishes that share a pastor and other facilities.

Others

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Other early parishes in the diocese include St. Mary's, Sacred Heart, Holy Ghost, and St. Anthony's.

Bishops

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Bishops of Dubuque

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  1. Mathias Loras (1837–1858)
  2. Clement Smyth, OCSO (1858–1865)
  3. John Hennessey (1866–1893), elevated to Archbishop

Archbishops of Dubuque

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  1. John Hennessey (1893–1900)
  2. John Keane (1900–1911)
  3. James Keane (1911–1929)
  4. Francis Beckman (1930–1946)
  5. Henry Rohlman (1946–1954; Coadjutor 1944–1946)
  6. Leo Binz (1954–1961), appointed Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
  7. James Byrne (1962–1983)
  8. Daniel Kucera, OSB (1983–1995)
  9. Jerome Hanus, OSB (1995–2013; Coadjutor 1994–1995)
  10. Michael Owen Jackels (2013–2023)
  11. Thomas Robert Zinkula (2023-present)

Auxiliary bishops

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Other diocesan priests who became bishops

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Other notable priests

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  • Reverend William Menster served as chaplain on US Navy Admiral Richard E. Byrd's fourth expedition to Antarctica in 1946. Menster became the first priest to set foot on the continent, and consecrated it in 1947.
  • US Navy Chaplain Reverend Aloysius Schmitt posthumously received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his heroic service in Pearl Harbor during the December 7, 1941 attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Stationed aboard the USS Oklahoma, he was trapped below decks with 12 other sailors when the ship capsized after being hit by torpedoes. With only a small porthole available for escape, Schmitt insisted on staying behind to help the other men escape. He was the first American chaplain to die in World War II. A destroyer was named in his honor.

Recent events

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Sexual abuse crisis

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Main article: Sexual abuse scandal in Dubuque archdiocese

The Dubuque Archdiocese has not been immune to the sexual abuse crisis affecting the church, but has had to deal with cases involving a couple dozen priests over a 60-year period.

Priest shortage

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The archdiocese has also felt the effects of the priest shortage that has affected the church in recent times. In recent years many smaller, rural parishes have had to close and their congregations had been absorbed into other nearby parishes. Some rural parishes have been clustered together where one priest will serve two or more parishes. Some parishes have no resident priest.

Another effect is that some duties that a priest would have performed in the past are performed by either religious (sister or deacon) individuals, or by the laity.

Controversy over The Passion of the Christ

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The Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ caused controversy in the archdiocese as well. That controversy has long since passed. One of the main issues raised by the film was an editorial cartoon on the movie that the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald published in its editorial section. This cartoon featured a religious sister using corporal punishment. Some in the community have felt that this was a slight against the sisters and all their years of hard work. Others, mainly middle age to older adults, have said that this was representative of the sisters who taught them while they were in school.

Education

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Main article: List of schools of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque

In Dubuque, the Catholic schools are all part of the Holy Family system. It was proposed to turn St. Anthony's school into a central school for certain grades. Parents of the parish felt that their concerns were being ignored. Eventually, the Archdiocesan Board of Education vetoed the plan, and told the school system to continue work on planning the system's future.

High schools

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School Location Mascot
Beckman Catholic High School Dyersville Trail Blazers
Columbus High School Waterloo Sailors
Don Bosco High School Gilbertville Dons
Marquette High School Bellevue Defenders[13]
Newman Catholic High School Mason City Knights
Wahlert Catholic High School Dubuque Golden Eagles
Xavier High School Cedar Rapids Saints

Seminaries

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Colleges and universities

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Suffragan dioceses

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Metropolitan Archdiocese of Dubuque". GCatholic. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
  2. ^ "November Day by Day".
  3. ^ Noguchi, Chieko (2023-07-26). "Pope Francis Appoints Bishop Thomas Zinkula as Archbishop of Dubuque". United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved 2023-12-23.
  4. ^ a b "History – New Melleray". Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  5. ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Iowa". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2024-10-13.
  6. ^ a b "St. Raphael Cathedral History". St. Raphael's Cathedral. Retrieved 2015-05-19.
  7. ^ a b c d "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Dubuque". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2024-10-13.
  8. ^ Keller, Rudi (June 13, 2014). "Knights of the Golden Circle".
  9. ^ Adam, Thomas, ed. (2005). Germany and the Americas. Vol. 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 458. ISBN 978-1851096282.
  10. ^ a b "St. John the Baptist | St. Elizabeth Pastorate". stelizabethpastorate.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  11. ^ a b c "St. Francis | home". www.lasallepastorate.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  12. ^ a b "SS. Peter & Paul | home". www.lasallepastorate.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  13. ^ "Marquette Catholic Schools". Marquette Catholic Schools. Archived from the original on 2024-02-23. Retrieved 2024-02-23.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Dubuque". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Sources

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  • Hoffman, Mathias M., Centennial History of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Columbia College Press, Dubuque, Iowa, 1938.
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