By Thea Jarvis

It is at once the privilege and challenge of Catholics in North Georgia to be key players in the historical growth of Catholicism in the Southeast. This growth, which brings with it the richness of our faith’s centuries old tradition, is ongoing.

Casting about for our beginnings, we look to eighteenth century Georgia, then newly settled and developed by European immigrants hoping for a better life. In 1790, Catholics of English descent left Maryland seeking greater religious freedom and settled in Locust Grove, about 100 miles east of Atlanta. The first Catholic community in the state, Locust Grove families built a simple log church they later named the Church of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

By 1820, the Catholic population in the South had grown to recognizable status. A 35-year-old native of Cork, Ireland, Father John England, became the first bishop of the Carolinas and Georgia, where 1,000 Catholics now resided. Before the Civil War erupted, further growth pushed that figure to 4,000 Catholics in Georgia alone, with parishes in Savannah, Macon, Columbus, Atlanta, and Locust Grove.

Sheer numbers encouraged the carving out of yet another ecclesiastical territory. In 1850, the Diocese of Savannah was established, headed by Dublin native Francis X. Gartland. All of Georgia was included in the new diocese, as well as parts of Florida.

The tempestuous Civil War era left its mark on southern Catholic history. A memorable footnote is General Sherman’s encounter with the indomitable pastor of Atlanta’s Shrine Church of the Immaculate Conception, Father Thomas O’Reilly. When Sherman led Union forces through Atlanta in 1864, O’Reilly prevailed upon him to leave the Catholic church and its Protestant sister churches intact. The Shrine, built in 1846 and the city’s oldest Catholic church, was allowed its life.

Mid-nineteenth century missionary activity accounted for much of the ministry to Georgia’s far-flung Catholic population, just as it does today, but church foundations were underway. In 1854, the first Catholic male orphanage was opened in Savannah. It would later be known as the Village of St. Joseph. As the northern half of the state continued to develop after the Civil War, Atlanta was a magnet for post-war population growth. Sacred Heart became Atlanta’s second Catholic church in 1879. Marist Fathers eventually directed the parish, opening an elementary and high school as educational needs surfaced. In 1880, the Sisters of Mercy opened their infirmary on Baker Street in Atlanta, predecessor to the St. Joseph’s Hospital we know today. St. Anthony’s Church in Atlanta’s West End began as an outgrowth of Sacred Heart in 1903, adding a parish school in 1912, the founding year for Our Lady of Lourdes Church.

From the hub of Atlanta, missions and churches were begun. The railroad meant the promise of weekend liturgies in remote rural settings; the constancy of the congregations meant strongholds for the faith. In 1936, the Cathedral of Christ the King was erected in Atlanta, just in time to celebrate the establishment of Georgia’s own diocese, Savannah-Atlanta.

For 19 years, the Savannah-Atlanta Diocese grew and flourished. Bishop Gerald P. O’Hara was the last to shepherd the state of Georgia as an ecclesiastical whole. In July, 1956, the Holy See created the Diocese of Atlanta and appointed Francis E. Hyland its first bishop.

Hyland, a Philadelphia native who had served as auxiliary bishop of Savannah-Atlanta since 1949, took charge of 23,600 Catholics in 71 north Georgia counties. Twenty-two parishes, 12 missions, 25 priests, 85 religious sisters and 20 seminarians came under his care. Undaunted by the size and scope of his territory, Bishop Hyland placed his people under the mantle of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and chose St. Pius X as their secondary patron.

In Hyland’s six years of service to the diocese, he fed and nurtured the young Church of north Georgia. Standing on the shoulders of early Catholic settlers, missionary priests and sisters, and his brother bishops, Francis Hyland continued the tradition of growth that was a faith-torch passed from generation to generation since its first lighting in Locust Grove.

Thomaston, Covington, Jackson and Dahlonega knew his presence, as did Roswell, where a mission was founded. In Atlanta, Immaculate Heart of Mary and Blessed Sacrament parishes were begun. In Conyers, Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery rose on a 1500-acree tract of land donated to the Trappist Order by a retired Kentucky police captain.

Schools had been a priority for north Georgia Catholics even before Bishop Hyland took the helm. In 1956, over 600 students were enrolled in Christ the King and Sacred Heart girls’ high schools and the Marist School for boys. Fourteen Catholic elementary institutions schooled over 4,500 children. By the late fifties, population movement dictated consolidation and change. The girls’ high schools were closed and students transferred to the new diocesan high school, St. Pius X, in 1958. In 1960, St. Joseph’s and Drexel high schools opened and D’Youville Academy for girls was begun.

Bishop Hyland’s failing health forced his resignation in 1961. In 1962, at the same time his successor was named, Atlanta was established as a Metropolitan Province, the ecclesiastical center of the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia. The north Georgia territory would now be known as the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Paul J. Hallinan, formerly Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, became the first Archbishop of Atlanta. An Ohio native and Notre Dame graduate, he was ordained for service to the Diocese of Cleveland. During World War II, Hallinan was stationed in the Pacific, where he eventually earned the Purple Heart. Returning home, he was active in the Newman Apostolate and in 1958 was appointed leader of Charleston’s Catholics.

Archbishop Hallinan came to Atlanta at a time when the city was first testing its crown title, capital of the new South. The exodus from the North and Midwest to the warmth and hospitality of the Southeast had begun and the population of North Georgia had grown to include 32,000 Catholics.

Broad change was underway in the universal Church as well. Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council in the fall of 1962 and Archbishop Hallinan not only attended Council sessions in Rome, but entered fully into the spirit of “aggiornamento” that flowed from them. As the Archdiocese of Atlanta grew, so did its implementation of reform and liturgical renewal. In the social justice arena, where Christians were being called on to confront the ugly face of racism, Archbishop Hallinan stood firm and moved forward with a personal commitment to civil rights.

While attending the Vatican Council sessions in Europe, north Georgia’s first archbishop contracted a serious form of hepatitis that would eventually result in his death. Failing health led him to request the assistance of an auxiliary bishop and, in 1966, his former Charleston chancellor, Joseph L. Bernardin, was assigned to Atlanta. That same year, the first archdiocesan synod was held, a gathering of religious, clergy and laity from all over north Georgia that set a tone and direction for the future of the archdiocese.

Archbishop Hallinan died in 1968 at the age of 56. One month later, Bishop Bernardin was appointed General Secretary to the United States Bishops’ Conference with headquarters in Washington, D.C., Thomas A. Donnellan, Bishop of Ogdensburg, New York, was chosen the second archbishop of Atlanta.

Thomas Donnellan was the son of Irish immigrants and a native New Yorker. He was secretary to Francis Cardinal Spellman, then chancellor, vocations director and finally auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York. He became Bishop of Ogdensburg, near the Canadian border, in 1964.

Archbishop Donnellan was curiously suited to the Southern challenge. He was a transplant, as were many of the 48,000 north Georgia Catholics he was to shepherd. His strong belief in education and social justice had been cultivated through first-hand experience. His faithfulness to Church teaching and tradition influenced the Church of north Georgia at a time when its unparalleled growth could have meant chaos and confusion.

For 19 years, Thomas Donnellan presided over unprecedented growth and change. He joined fellow church leaders and civil servants in working for ecumenical understanding, civil rights and economic progress. In 1982, he became part of the bishops’ committee responsible for issuing the 1986 pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.”

During Archbishop Donnellan’s tenure, as the South arose from sleep to set the pace for late twentieth century progress and development, the Archdiocese of Atlanta stretched and grew, reaching a total Catholic population of 150,000 Catholics. Thirty-two new parishes were established. Schools were closed and consolidated, a new one opened. Campus ministry came into its own and ground was broken for a senior citizens’ residence. Religious orders of sisters and priests from all over the country were invited into the archdiocese to preach, teach, counsel and heal.

The diversity of the north Georgia experience was still apparent, particularly when visitors set out from metropolitan Atlanta and traveled to mountain missions, or celebrated a Sunday liturgy in a peaceful monastic setting. But streamlined roadways and heightened mobility homogenized the archdiocese, unified it to a degree not yet experienced in its short and colorful history.

Thomas Donnellan suffered a stroke in the spring of 1987 and died the following fall at the age of 73. In March, 1988, Eugene Marino, auxiliary bishop of Washington, D.C. was appointed third Archbishop of Atlanta. The challenge and privilege of sharing in the growth of Catholicism in the South now becomes his, as it continues to be ours.