Before the American Revolution, the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, which included the Worcester area, had enacted laws prohibiting the practice of Catholicism in the colony.

[2] After the Revolution ended in 1783, Pope Pius VI want to remove American Catholics from the jurisdiction of the Diocese of London.

[4] In the 1820s, Irish immigrants began arrived in Worcester Country to work on the railroads and construct the Blackstone Canal.

[9] When Reilly retired in 2004, John Paul II appointed Auxiliary Bishop Robert McManus from the Diocese of Providence to replace him.

McManus in 2007 criticized the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester for renting out "sacred space" to the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy for workshops.

[11] Lowe B. Dongor was indicted in September 2011 on processing child pornography and stealing money from St. Joseph’s Parish in Fitchburg to send to his family in the Philippines.

[13] In April 2012, McManus asked Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts, to rescind an invitation to activist Victoria Kennedy to speak at its commencement ceremony, citing her views on abortion rights for women and same sex marriage.

[15] In June 2012, diocesan officials declined to sell Oakhurst, an historic mansion in Northbridge, Massachusetts used as a retreat center, to James Fairbanks and Alain Beret, a married gay couple.

[20] McManus was arrested in 2013 in Narragansett, Rhode Island, for drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident, and refusing a chemical sobriety test.

[21] McManus later pleaded guilty to refusing to take the test, which resulted in a loss of license for six months, 10 hours of community service and a $945 fine.

The shrine was installed with help from Nasarean.org, an organization founded by Benedict Kiely which advocates for Christians facing persecution in the Middle East.

He alleged being sexually molested by David A. Holley, a priest at St. Denis Catholic Church in Douglas for one year during the 1970s.

[26] In August 1997, the Dallas Morning News released a 1968 letter sent by Bishop Flanagan to Jerome Hayden, a Catholic therapist in Holliston.

[31] The plaintiff alleged that Thomas E. Mahoney, a diocesan priest, had groomed and abused him and other boys in the early 1970s in Worcester and Boylston.

[31] In December 2022, Nicole Bell, sued the diocese, claiming that she and other women had been sexually abused by William Riley, the food for the poor coordinator at St. John’s Catholic Church.

[33] Michael Wallace Banach, appointed Apostolic Nuncio and Titular Archbishop in 2013 In 2004, Bishop Reilly grouped parishes into "clusters".