[3] However, by 1719, the Rhode Island General Assembly had enacted a law disenfranchising Catholics from voting to discourage any from moving to the colony.

[4] During the American Revolution, a French army camped in Newport and Providence; the first Catholic masses in the colony were celebrated there for these soldiers.

The construction of Fort Adams in Newport and the establishment of cotton mills in Pawtucket started attracting Irish Catholic immigrants to Rhode Island.

Corry finally obtained a property and starting building Saints Peter and Paul Church, which was dedicated in 1838.

The pope also included the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, the Cape Cod area, and other parts of southern Massachusetts in the new diocese.

[14] During Hendricken's tenure, French Canadian Catholics started migrating into the diocese to work in the textile mills in Woonsocket and Fall River, Massachusetts.

After Hendricken died in 1886, Pope Leo XIII in 1887 named Matthew Harkins of Boston as the next bishop of Providence.

Due to Harkins's advancing age and declining health, the Vatican appointed two auxiliary bishops to the diocese between 1914 and 1917.

The diocese soon unveiled plans to upgrade Mount Saint Charles Academy, a secondary school in Woonsocket.

[19][18] Daignault and the Sentinellists first appealed Hickey's plans to Archbishop Pietro Fumasoni-Biondi, the apostolic delegate, or Vatican representative, to the United States.

The Sentinellists finally sent a delegation to Vatican City to appeal directly to Pope Pius XI, but he refused to see them.

[20][21] In 1927, Hickey excommunicated Daignault and other Sentinellists and placed La Sentinelle on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, prohibiting Catholics from reading it.

To replace Hickey, Pius XI named Francis Patrick Keough of Hartford as the next bishop of Providence.

During the Great Depression, Keough assigned chaplains to Civilian Conservation Corps work crews in Rhode Island.

[22] During Keough's tenure as bishop, the Catholic population of the diocese increased from 325,000 to 425,000, and the number of clergy grew by fifty percent.

[23] He also founded a minor seminary, eased tensions between the French- and English-speaking parishioners, and reduced the heavy debt load of the diocese.

After McVinney died in 1971, Pope Paul VI named Louis Edward Gelineau from the Diocese of Burlington as the sixth bishop of Providence.

[29] In 1985, Gélineau registered opposition to an ordinance for the City of Providence to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in employment, housing, credit and access to public accommodations.

"[30] In 1988, Gélineau declared that removing a feeding tube from 48-year-old Marcia Gray, a comatose Rhode Island woman, "does not contradict Catholic moral theology," but emphasized that he "in no way supports or condones the practice of euthanasia.

[44] In 2003, Christopher Young sued the diocese, claiming that he had been sexually abused as a minor by John Petrocelli, former assistant pastor at Holy Family Parish in Woonsocket.

The diocese won the case in lower court, citing the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibited judges interfere with the practise of religion.

[47] In July 2019, the diocese released a list of 50 clerics, religious order priests and deacons with credible accusations of sexual abuse.

In 2013, Jeffrey Thomas and Helen McGonigle accused Brendan Smyth of raping them as children at Our Lady of Mercy Church in East Greenwich between 1965 and 1968.