The Basilica of Sainte Anne de Détroit is the second oldest continuously operating Catholic parish in the United States, dating to 1701.

In July of that year, a group of French-Canadian settlers, led by the explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, arrived at the mouth of the Detroit River.

At the time, the new diocese covered a vast area in the American Midwest and Great Plains, extending through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas to the Missouri River.

[12] Gregory XVI recalled him to Rome and appointed Reverend Peter Paul Lefevere as coadjutor bishop to assume its operation.

[14] To replace Lefevere as coadjutor bishop of Detroit, Pope Pius IX in 1870 named Monsignor Caspar Borgess of Cincinnati.

A Catholic property owner in Kalamazoo mortgaged his farm to loan money to his pastor to pay for the construction of St. Augustine's Church.

[22] Foley established the first parish for African Americans, St. Peter Claver, in Detroit, in 1911, although chapels and missions for African-American Catholics had existed since the late 1870s.

[24] The development of the automobile industry in Detroit led to a massive increase in population, and the number of Catholics in the diocese more than tripled during Foley's tenure.

[27] In 1919, Gallagher opened Sacred Heart Major Seminary in a temporary structure in Detroit to alleviate the priest shortage.

[37] In October 1937, Mooney publicly rebuked Coughlin for calling Roosevelt "stupid" over his nomination of Senator Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court.

[39] (Coughlin's anti-Semitism became more blatant with the outbreak of World War II, leading Mooney to repeatedly rebuke him and radio stations refusing to air his broadcasts.

[43] In a 1939 meeting of all the archdiocesan priests, Mooney proposed the establishment of labor schools in the parishes to help "Christian workers to train themselves in principle and technique to assume the leadership in the unions which their numbers justify".

Every year, he would take a group of altar boys to the opening game of the Detroit Tigers major league baseball team.

[45] In 1942, the US Department of Justice informed Mooney that it was planning to indict Coughlin on charges of sedition, based on his espousal of Nazi doctrines.

As part of a deal to avoid Coughlin's prosecution, Mooney ordered him to end his political activities and work solely as a parish priest.

[47] As the northern suburbs of Detroit grew after World War II ended in 1945, Mooney added parishes in Oakland County.

[48] That same year, Pope Pius XII named Bishop John Dearden from the Diocese of Pittsburgh as coadjutor archbishop to assist Mooney.

He was active in community causes, such as supporting equal employment opportunities and encouraging his diocese to work for better racial relations in Detroit.

[50] He also announced that the archdiocese would give preferential treatment to suppliers who provided equal employment opportunities to minority groups.

[11] After the permanent diaconate was restored during the Second Vatican Council, Dearden in 1971 became the first American bishop or archbishop to ordain married laymen as deacons.

This note ended required Sunday sports practices and games in Catholic schools so that students could spend that day focused on prayer, family and rest.

[59] In 2002, Wayne County prosecutors indicted Reverends Harry Benjamin, Robert Burkholder, Edward Olszewski, and Jason E. Sigler on criminal sexual conduct charges.

[60] In May 2019, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel indicted two priests who had previously served in the archdiocese:[61] In July 2019, the archdiocese removed Reverend Eduard Perrone, pastor of Assumption Grotto Parish in Detroit from public ministry after determining that allegations that he sexually abused a child decades ago were "credible".

[67] The archdiocese took action based on accusations from a Wayne County police detective who claimed that Perrone sexually assaulted a boy 40 years earlier.

In August 2020, Perrone received a $125,000 settlement from Wayne County for a defamation lawsuit he filed against the detective[68] That same month, 20 parishioners from Assumption Grotto sued the archdiocese.

He was additionally charged in June 2021 with sexually assault two young teenagers at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte during the same time period.

The plaintiff claimed that he was raped in 2010, when he was eight years old, by Aloysius Volskis, then a teacher at Bishop Kelly Catholic School in Lapeer, Michigan.

In response, McNaught filed a complaint against the Catholic with the Human Rights Commission for the City of Detroit, claiming sexual discrimination.

"[81] In 2020, the archdiocese fired Terry Gonda, the music director at St. John Fisher Parish in Auburn Hills, for being married to another woman.

In a podcast following his letter, Vigneron called acceptance of transgender individuals by society as "...a toxin that's been deposited in our culture" and compared transgenderism to a virus.