Early history During the 17th century, the Massachusetts colonies enacted legal restrictions on Catholics,
Anglicans,
Quakers, and other non-Puritan Protestants. They also enacted specific bans on Catholic worship. By 1700, the British
Province of Massachusetts Bay had made it a crime, with a potential life sentence, for a Catholic priest to reside in the colony. With the start of the
American Revolutionary War in 1776, attitudes towards Catholics shifted in the American colonies. The rebel leaders needed to gain the support of Catholics for their cause. In addition, the alliance with Catholic France fostered a more favorable attitude among Americans towards Catholicism. The
Constitution of the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, written by future US President
John Adams and ratified in 1780, established religious freedom for Catholics in the new state. With the erection of the
Diocese of Baltimore in 1789, Catholics in Massachusetts now came under American Catholic jurisdiction
Formation '' by
Gilbert Stuart (1823)
Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Boston on April 8, 1808, taking all of
New England from the Diocese of Baltimore. The new diocese consisted of the states of
Connecticut, Massachusetts (which included present-day
Maine), New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, and Vermont. The pope named Cheverus as the first bishop of Boston. Cheverus supported the establishment in 1816 of the
Provident Institution for Savings in Boston, the first chartered
savings bank in the United States He believed the bank would help his parishioners establish good financial practices. In 1820, Cheverus oversaw the opening of an Ursuline convent in the rectory of Holy Cross Cathedral with a girls school for poor children.'''''' He was appointed in 1823 as bishop of Montauban in France. Monsignor
Benedict Fenwick was appointed the second bishop of Boston by
Pope Leo XII on May 10, 1825. Though the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese encompassed all of
New England, Fenwick had only two priests under his charge, who served three Catholic churches, besides the cathedral, in all of New England:
Saint Augustine's Chapel in Boston,
St. Patrick's Church in
Newcastle, Maine, and a small church in
Claremont, New Hampshire. Throughout New England, there were approximately 10,000 Catholics. Due to significant Irish immigration, the Catholic population in the diocese grew to at least 30,000 by 1833. Fenwick traveled throughout the large territory to manage the diocese and administer the sacrament of
confirmation. This included visiting
Penobscot and
Passamaquoddy tribes in
Maine, who were largely Catholic, and were the subject of intensive
proselytism by Protestant evangelists. Fenwick ordered the construction of
St. Anne's Church in
Old Town, Maine, for them in 1828, and sought to improve their schools. As a result, the number of priests in the diocese had increased to 24 by 1833. On August 10, 1834, posters were displayed in Charleston that declared an
ultimatum: unless the Ursuline Convent and Academy of Mount Benedict were investigated by the
board of selectmen of Charlestown, it would be "demolished" by the "Truckmen of Boston." The following day, authorities were sent to inspect the convent. As they left, a mob of 2,000, wearing masks or painted faces, encircled the convent. They threw bricks through the windows, stole precious objects from the interior, and then lit it ablaze; the nuns fled. The fire department arrived, but did not attempt to extinguish the fire. By the end of Fenwick's episcopate, the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Boston (after the removal of the Diocese of Hartford) had increased to 70,000, in addition to 37 priests, and 44 churches. Fenwick died in 1846.
Diocesan offices In the 1920s, Cardinal William O'Connell moved the
chancery from offices near Holy Cross Cathedral in the South End to 127 Lake Street in the
Brighton neighborhood of Boston. "Lake Street" was a
metonym for the bishop and the office of the archdiocese. The archdiocesan offices of the archdiocese moved to
Braintree. The archdiocesan seminary,
Saint John's Seminary, remains on the property in Brighton.
Clergy sexual abuse scandals and settlements At the beginning of the 21st century the archdiocese was shaken by
accusations of sexual abuse by clergy that culminated in the resignation of its archbishop, Cardinal
Bernard Francis Law, on December 13, 2002. In September 2003, the archdiocese settled over 500 abuse-related claims for $85 million. Victims received an average of $92,000 each. Perpetrators included 140 priests and two others. Additional sex abuse allegations within the Archdiocese of Boston surfaced in later years. This included alleged abuse at Saint John's Seminary and
Arlington Catholic High School. The Archdiocese of Boston lobbies against the proposed law to remove the statute of limitations on
child sexual abuse lawsuits. From 2011 and 2019 the Catholic church in Massachusetts spent over half a million dollars lobbying against such laws. ==Coat of arms==