John Carroll SJ (January 8, 1735 – December 3, 1815[1]) was an American Catholic prelate who served as the first Bishop of Baltimore, the first diocese in the new United States.

Born to an aristocratic family in the colonial-era Province of Maryland, Carroll spent most of his early years as a priest in Europe, teaching and serving as a chaplain.

As the Province of Maryland did not allow Catholic education, the school was run secretly by the Jesuit Reverend Thomas Poulton.

When Carroll reached age 13, his family sent him and his cousin Charles to the College of St. Omer in the Artois region of France.

[12] When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773, Carroll returned to the family plantation in Maryland.

[13] In 1776, the Continental Congress asked Charles Carroll, attorney Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin to travel to the British Province of Canada on a diplomatic mission.

Beginning on June 27, 1783, Carroll held a series of meetings at White Marsh Manor in Bowie, Maryland.

[15] The papal nuncio in France, Cardinal Giuseppe Doria Pamphili, then asked the American ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, for advice on the matter.

[15] On June 9, 1784, Pope Pius VI appointed Carroll as provisional superior of the missions for the United States, with the power to celebrate the sacrament of confirmation.

Through his meetings with the clergy, Carroll sought to build a church structure that accepted the need for lay involvement while providing a reasonable degree of hierarchical control.

Carroll suggested that the chief obstacles to Christian unity were the lack of clarity by the Vatican on the boundaries of papal primacy and the use of Latin in the Catholic liturgy.

[19][8][11] Returning to the United States, Carroll was invested as bishop at St. Thomas Manor Church in Charles County, Maryland.

[20] When it was established, the Diocese of Baltimore had jurisdiction over what is today the area of the United States east of the Mississippi River.

[23][24] In March 1790, Carroll sent a message of congratulations, along with a blessing, to the newly elected president, George Washington, on behalf of all American Catholics.

[25] In 1795, at Carroll's request, the Vatican appointed the Reverend Leonard Neale as a coadjutor bishop in Baltimore to assist him.

One decree dictation that parishes divide their income into one third to support their clergy, one third to maintain their churches and the remainder to aid the poor.

[31] To train priests for his new diocese, Carroll asked the Fathers of the Company of Saint Sulpice to come from France to Baltimore.

That same year Carroll urged Dominican friars from England to open a priory and college in Kentucky to serve the numerous Catholics who had been migrating there from Maryland.

The new cathedral was designed by architect Benjamin Latrobe, who had overseen construction of the new United States Capitol building.

[35] The pope divided the nation into four suffragan dioceses under the new archdiocese: Pius VII named Carroll as the first archbishop of Baltimore.

[15] As both superior of the missions and bishop, Carroll promoted the use of vernacular languages in the liturgy, but was never able to gain the support of the Vatican.

In 1787, he wrote: Can there be anything more preposterous than an unknown tongue; and in this country either for want of books or inability to read, the great part of our congregations must be utterly ignorant of the meaning and sense of the public office of the Church.

It may have been prudent, for aught I know, to impose a compliance in this matter with the insulting and reproachful demands of the first reformers; but to continue the practice of the Latin liturgy in the present state of things must be owing either to chimerical fears of innovation or to indolence and inattention in the first pastors of the national Churches in not joining to solicit or indeed ordain this necessary alteration.

Carroll believed that this policy would prevent the breakup of families of enslaved people and allow for the care of their elderly.

[15] Responding to critics of this approach, he said:Since the great stir raised in England about Slavery, my Brethren being anxious to suppress censure, which some are always glad to affix to the priesthood, have begun some years ago, and are gradually proceeding to emancipate the old population on their estates.