History
A Catholic History of New York
Catholic New York begins with the Jesuit Isaac Jogues, a captive who heard two confessions on Manhattan in 1643, and passes through a century of penal laws before Saint Peter's opens in 1786. The diocese came in 1808, Archbishop Hughes laid the cornerstone of the Fifth Avenue cathedral in 1858, and Irish, Italian, German, Puerto Rican, Haitian and other immigrants filled the parishes. Seton, Toussaint, Cabrini, Dorothy Day and Fulton Sheen belong to the city, and every pope since Paul VI in 1965 has come, the latest being Francis in 2015. Archbishop Ronald Hicks was installed on February 6, 2026.
Before 1664
A Captive Priest in New Amsterdam
The Dutch colony of New Netherland recognized only the Reformed Church, and public Catholic worship was not tolerated. In 1643 the French Jesuit Isaac Jogues, ransomed from the Mohawks with Dutch help, reached New Amsterdam and waited there for a ship to France. The Catholic Encyclopedia says he found two Catholics on Manhattan, a young Irishman and a Portuguese woman, and heard their confessions, which makes him the first priest known to have ministered in the territory of the diocese. No source records a Mass on the island.
Jogues went back to the Mohawk country and was killed at Ossernenon, today Auriesville, on October 18, 1646. He was canonized in 1930 with the North American Martyrs. Auriesville, where Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656, is about three hours north of the city by car. Nothing from this era survives on Manhattan; the first Catholic memory of New York is a captive passing through.