Background Early expeditions The first Catholic presence in southwest Florida was the expedition of the Spaniard
Juan Ponce de León, who arrived on the Gulf Coast in 1513. Hostility from the native
Calusa people prevented him from landing. De Leon returned to the region with a colonizing expedition in 1521, landing near either
Charlotte Harbor or the mouth of the
Caloosahatchee River. His expedition included 200 men, and several priests were among them. In 1539, Spanish explorer
Hernando De Soto landed near present day
Port Charlotte or
San Carlos Bay. He named the new territory "La Bahia de Espiritu Santo," in honor of the
Holy Spirit. The De Soto expedition later proceeded to the
Tampa Bay area and then into central Florida. The Spanish missionary
Luis de Cáncer arrived by sea with several
Dominican priests in present day
Bradenton in 1549. Encountering a seemingly peaceful party of
Tocobaga clan members, they decided to travel on to Tampa Bay. Several of the priests went overland with the Tocobaga while Cáncer and the rest of the party sailed to Tampa Bay to meet them. Arriving at Tampa Bay, Cáncer learned, while still on his ship, that the Tocobaga had murdered the priests in the overland party. Ignoring advice to leave the area, Cáncer went ashore, where he too was murdered. In 1565, the Spanish explorer
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of
Saint Augustine and Governor of
Spanish Florida, brokered a peace agreement with the Calusa peoples. This agreement allowed him to build the
San Antón de Carlos mission at
Mound Key in what is now
Lee County. Menéndez de Avilés also built a fort at Mound Key and established a
garrison. San Antón de Carlos was the first Jesuit mission in the Western Hemisphere and the first Catholic presence within the Venice area.
Juan Rogel and Francisco de Villareal spent the winter at the mission studying the Calusa language, then started evangelizing among the Calusa in southern Florida. The Jesuits built a chapel at the mission in 1567. Conflicts with the Calusa soon increased, prompting Menéndez de Avilés to abandon San Antón de Carlos in 1569.
Further development After the end of the
French and Indian War in 1763, Spain ceded all of Florida to Great Britain for the return of
Cuba. Given the antagonism of
Protestant Great Britain to Catholicism, the majority of the Catholic population in Florida fled to Cuba. After the
American Revolution, Spain regained control of Florida in 1784. In 1793, the Vatican changed the jurisdiction for Florida Catholics from Havana to the Apostolic Vicariate of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, based in
New Orleans. In the
Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Spain ceded all of Florida to the United States, which established the
Florida Territory in 1821. In 1825, the Vicariate of Alabama and Florida was erected; it included all of Florida, based in
Mobile, Alabama.In 1858, Pius IX moved Florida into a new Apostolic Vicariate of Florida, which in 1870 was converted into the
Diocese of St. Augustine, which included the Venice area. After the end of the
American Civil War in 1865, Catholic missionaries from dioceses in
Savannah, St. Augustine, and
Tampa, began visiting the Venice area. Jesuit priests made regular visits to Bradenton, Fort Myers,
Arcadia, and adjacent missions. The first missions established by Jesuits in southwest Florida were: • Sacred Heart in Bradenton (1868) • Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (later St. Francis Xavier) in
Fort Myers (1878) • St. Paul in
Arcadia (1882) • Sacred Heart in
Punta Gorda (1888) • St. Martha in
Sarasota (1889) In the early years of the 20th Century, the following parishes were established in the Venice area: • St. Michael in
Wauchula (1915) • St. Joseph in Bradenton (1915) • St. Catherine in
Sebring (1918) Epiphany Parish, the first in Venice, was established as a mission in 1935. After the end of
World War II in 1945, Bishop
Joseph P. Hurley of St. Augustine started a program of purchasing property throughout Florida to develop new parishes for the increasing Catholic population. He also recruited priests from the northern states and Ireland. St. Ann's, the first parish in Naples, opened in 1950.
Establishment The Diocese of Venice in Florida was erected by
Pope John Paul II in 1984 from parts of the
Archdiocese of Miami and the
Dioceses of Orlando, and
St. Petersburg;
John J. Nevins, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami, was the founding bishop. Nevins built a memorial to the
eucharist and a memorial cross in 1994 at
De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton. This was to honor the priests from the
Cáncer expedition who were killed there in 1549. In 2006,
Frank Dewane was appointed as
coadjutor bishop.
Sex abuse Charles Cikovic pleaded guilty in 1993 to
sexual battery on a child and of lewd and
lascivious assault on a child. The priest's victim was a 13-year-old girl whom he abused in 1992 and early 1993. Cikovic was sentenced to six months in prison and 20 years of
probation. The girl's family sued the diocese in February 1994; the diocese settled the lawsuit three years later. In November 2005, a
St. Petersburg man filed a lawsuit against Nevins and the diocese, claiming that he was sexually abused as a minor by George E. Brennan. The plaintiff claimed to have been sodomized in 1984 four times at Incarnation Catholic Church in Sarasota. The suit said that Nevins covered up the alleged crime. Brennan had been arrested in 1991 during a
police sting operation against prostitution after exposing himself to an undercover officer. He pleaded
no contest to the charge. The diocese settled a lawsuit with a Fort Myers man in 2014 regarding Jean Joseph from
Holmes Beach. The plaintiff claimed that Joseph sexually abused him in the 1990s. Joseph was ultimately removed from his posting and
laicized. Robert Little, a lay minister at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Fort Myers, was arrested in January 2014 on
felony charges of lewd or lascivious behavior on a victim between ages 12 and 16. The victim was a special needs 13-year-old whom Little sexually abused several times. In a
plea agreement, Little was sentenced to three days in jail and ten years probation. ==Bishops==