The History of the Diocese

The first Catholics in the State of New Jersey were French and Irish immigrants who crossed the Hudson River from the settlement of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island and established themselves in what is now Middlesex County, where the first Mass was celebrated near Woodbridge, in secret for fear of persecution and hostility, about 1672. That small colony remained anonymous, was prevented from growing by stringent laws against them, and eventually disappeared. Another small group came from Belgium in 1740 to Salem County, but they met with similar hardship and soon lost their identity. It was only with the great influx of continental European immigrants, most of them Catholics, in the nineteenth century, and the very gradual decline of the harsh prejudice against them, that the Church became a presence in New Jersey.

All the Catholics in America were the responsibility of the Bishop of Baltimore, the first American diocese, until 1808, when dioceses were established at New York and at Philadelphia, each including about half the territory of the State of New Jersey. During the early 1850's, the Catholics of Warren, Hunterdon and part of Somerset Counties were under the pastoral charge of St. John Neumann, fourth Bishop of Philadelphia.

In 1853, Pope Pius IX established a Diocese at Newark for all the Catholics in the State, who then numbered only a few thousand in all twenty-one counties.

On August 11, 1881, Pope Leo XIII established the Diocese of Trenton, embracing the fourteen central and southern counties of the State. Because of the providential growth of the Catholic population during the first decades of this century, Pope Pius XI established in 1937 a Diocese at Camden for the people of the six southern-most counties, and a diocese at Paterson for the three counties of the northwest.

Continued growth of the faith during the intervening years resulted in the establishment by Pope John Paul II on November 19, 1981 of the new Diocese of Metuchen for the Catholics in Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties.

The Bishop of Metuchen is responsible for a flock of more than 600,000 Catholics, forty-two percent of the population of these counties, who gather for worship and fellowship in over a hundred parish communities. He shares his shepherding ministry with one hundred sixty priests of the Diocese, assisted by over a hundred priests from religious communities and from other dioceses, by 150 deacons, and by over six hundred religious brothers and sisters serving in fifty-two elementary schools and many other religious and charitable institutions.