Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh


The Diocese of Raleigh is a Roman Catholic diocese that covers the eastern half of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Atlanta. On July 5, 2017, Pope Francis named Luis Rafael Zarama to be the 6th Bishop of Raleigh; Zarama was installed on August 29, 2017 at the recently consecrated Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral.

Cathedral churches

The bishop is seated at Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Basilica Shrine of St. Mary, a minor basilica in Wilmington, was once used as a cathedral for the Carolina areas before the Diocese of Raleigh was founded. The Former Pro-Cathedral of St. Thomas the Apostle, in Wilmington, was secularized. Prior to Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Sacred Heart Cathedral served as the cathedral from 1924-2017. Since the dedication of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral on July 26, 2017, the former Sacred Heart Cathedral has been relegated to a church.
Construction on Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral commenced January 3, 2015. The cathedral was designed by O'Brien and Keane of Arlington, Virginia in the Romanesque Revival style, containing a cruciform floor plan with a dome over the crossing and 42 stained glass windows and Stations of the Cross from closed churches in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Beyer Studio of Philadelphia restored the windows before they were installed.

History

In June 2002 a man who was in theological formation in the Diocese of Raleigh claimed to have been sexually molested by Father Edward J. Shoback twenty-five years earlier in Pennsylvania. The Diocese of Raleigh terminated its relationship with the alleged victim.
In 2007 Justin David Scranton, an English teacher and cross country coach at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, admitted to acting inappropriately toward a student. The school suspended him during an investigation. He was arrested on February 28, 2007 on charges that he took indecent liberties with a female student. In March 2007 a group of protesters, some alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse, stood outside the offices for the Diocese of Raleigh, claiming that Bishop Michael Francis Burbidge refused to meet with them. Later that year the Diocese paid almost $2 million to settle sexual misconduct claims made by thirty-seven people against at least fifteen priests since the 1950s.
In July 2015 a three judge panel ruled to allow a lawsuit against the Diocese of Raleigh over an allegation of child sexual abuse by a priest to advance. The North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected arguments made by lawyers representing Bishop Burbidge and the Diocese that claimed allowing the lawsuit to advance into trial would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The case involved allegations of sexual abuse of a sixteen year old boy by Edgar Sepulveda, a Catholic priest of the Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús Mission in Beulaville, North Carolina. Sepulveda denied the accusations. Sepulveda had been arrested in 2010 and charged with second-degree sexual offense and sexual battery but the charges were dropped by Brunswick County prosecutors citing a lack of evidence. Bishop Burbidge put Sepulveda on administrative leave, prohibiting him from visiting any parish or Catholic school, and removed him from residence on church grounds. The lawsuit claimed that the bishop was negligent and inflicted further emotional distress on the victim by refusing to order Sepulveda to undergo testing for sexually transmitted diseases and then share results with the victim's family. The church's lawyers denied that church officials had any knowledge of Sepulveda's alleged actions.
In 2013 Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests criticized Bishop Burbidge and Bishop Peter J. Jugis of Charlotte for not warning families in their dioceses about Raymond P. Melville, a former Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse in Maine and in Maryland, who had moved to North Carolina.
In August 2018 a grand jury report regarding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania named two former North Carolina priests in the list of 301 priests guilty of sexual abuse. Fr. William Presley and Fr. Robert Spangenberg both worked in the Diocese of Raleigh in the 1970s and 1980s. Presley, whom the report describes as a "violent predator who insinuated himself into the lives of families for the purpose of getting close enough to their children that he could abuse them", had served at a parish in Kinston from 1981 until 1983 while Spangenberg served at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Newton Grove and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Clinton from 1977 until 1979.

Bishops

Ordinaries

Apostolic Vicars of North Carolina

  1. James Gibbons, appointed Bishop of Richmond and later Archbishop of Baltimore
  2. # Stanislaus Mark Gross
  3. Henry Pinckney Northrop, appointed Bishop of Charleston
  4. Leo Michael Haid, O.S.B., appointed abbot of Belmont Abbey

    Bishops of Raleigh

  5. William J. Hafey, appointed Bishop of Scranton
  6. Eugene J. McGuinness, appointed Bishop of Oklahoma City-Tulsa
  7. Vincent S. Waters
  8. Francis J. Gossman
  9. Michael Francis Burbidge, appointed Bishop of Arlington
  10. Luis Rafael Zarama

    Auxiliary Bishops

  11. James Johnston Navagh, appointed Bishop of Ogdensburg and later Bishop of Paterson
  12. Charles Borromeo McLaughlin, appointed Bishop of Saint Petersburg
  13. George Edward Lynch

    Other priests in the diocese who became bishops

  14. Joseph Lennox Federal, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Salt Lake in 1951
  15. Michael Joseph Begley, appointed Bishop of Charlotte in 1971
  16. Joseph Lawson Howze, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Natchez-Jackson in 1972
  17. Bernard Shlesinger, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Atlanta in 2017

    Statistics and extent of the diocese

As per 2015, it pastorally served 231,230 Catholics on 82,556 km² in 79 parishes and 5 missions with 162 priests, 73 deacons, 90 lay religious and 29 seminarians.
In 2010, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh contained seven Catholic centers on college campuses; 70 active diocesan priests and 49 active religious priests; 64 religious sisters; 47 religious men; 217,000 registered Catholics; and 240,000 unregistered Hispanics.

Catholic Education in the diocese

The Diocese of Raleigh currently has two high schools, as well as a lay-run high school and many lower schools. Of these include;

High schools

Women Religious have made an invaluable contribution to the life and growth of the Catholic Church in North Carolina. Sisters of Mercy from Charleston, South Carolina, moved to Wilmington in 1862 to care for victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic. In 1869, this same order of sisters opened the "Academy of the Incarnation". These Sisters are also credited with opening schools in the western part of our state, including: St. Patrick School, Sacred Heart Academy, and Sacred Heart School. The Sisters of Mercy is the one community of women religious working in our state whose motherhouse is also located here.
Both the orphanages in Belmont, North Carolina, and Raleigh, North Carolina were staffed by the Sister of Mercy of North Carolina. The last five years of the Catholic Orphanage on Nazareth Street in Raleigh, North Carolina were served by the Sisters of Notre Dame, Chardon, Ohio.
Other communities of women religious also answered the call to serve in North Carolina. The Religious of Christian Education opened St. Genevieve of the Pines Academy Asheville, in 1908. Equally prolific, the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, New York, staffed the Catholic School in Newton Grove in 1907, founded Sacred Heart Academy in Raleigh—1909, and began Immaculata School in Durham in 1909. In 1926, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, PA, staffed St. Joseph's School, New Bern, for "colored children." This school had been opened by Father Thomas Frederick Prince in 1887 and was staffed by lay people until the I.H.M. Sisters came. In 1927 they also founded schools serving black children in Goldsboro and Washington, North Carolina, as well as another New Bern school and a school in Raleigh.

Radio station

The diocese is the licensee for a low power FM station, WSHP-LP, 103.3 MHz, located in Cary, North Carolina. Responsibility for this station's operation is primarily held by Divine Mercy Radio, Inc., a local lay apostolate organization.