Bishop John England

John England, the first Catholic bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, was born in 1786 in Cork, Ireland, to Thomas England and Honora Lordan; owners of a tobacco business.  England, the oldest of ten children, became an ordained priest in Cork in 1808, and was then appointed chaplain to the North Presentation Convent in Cork. In 1817, England was transferred from Cork to Bandon, a nearby village where he served as the parish priest.

In July 1820, Pope Pius VIII established the Diocese of Charleston which was formed from the Archdiocese of Baltimore under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Baltimore. It encompassed 140,000 square miles and consisted of three states; North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; with Charleston, South Carolina as the see city. England was consecrated as bishop in St. Finbar’s church in Cork on September 21, 1820. With his sister, Joanna, and Father Denis Corkey, he travelled to Charleston aboard the ship Thomas Gelston, arriving in December, 1820.  England remained in Charleston as bishop where he created the first Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States, the United States Catholic Miscellany, with the assistance of his sister, Joanna; issued an official constitution that established the rules by which the diocese would be governed, as well as created other works and writings. John England died in 1842.