Mark 16:15
He said to them, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature."
About 2000 years ago Jesus started His Church here on earth and commisioned His Apostles to spread the Gospel. About the year 100AD Christians started calling themselves "Catholic", which means universal, identifying the Church with its mission to include everyone as part of the faith.
In 2000 years Catholicism has spread to the ends of the earth maintaining and spreading the Gospel message.
Historical Background in the United States
Catholicism was the first European religion to arrive in America, brought to the New World by Spanish and French explorers. The first Catholic settlement in North America was the Spanish-Catholic colony founded at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565.
It is interesting to note that Jamestown was not established until 1607.
Catholics were not allowed to have churches in the original English colonies, which were overwhelmingly populated by Protestants. When the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Catholics made up only one per cent of the total population of the 13 colonies. Philadelphia, site of the first Continental Congress, had the largest number of Catholics.
The state of Maryland was founded by George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, as a haven where Catholics could live without fear of persecution for their religious beliefs.
The first U.S. bishop was John Carroll, a former Jesuit priest, who was appointed by the Pope as bishop of Baltimore in 1789. The Pope designated Baltimore the first Catholic diocese in the United States.
Until about 1850, the Roman Catholic population of the United States was a small minority made up primarily of English Catholics. Following the potato famine and other events in Europe in the 1840s, millions of Irish and other European Catholics began a massive emigration to the United States. In the early to mid-1800s, Catholics made up only 5 percent of the nation's population. But by the end of the 19th century, the Catholic population had grown to represent 14 percent of the total U.S. population (14 million out of 82 million people).
By the early 1900s, Catholicism was the single largest religious denomination in the country.
In 1862 the founding parish in San Bernardino was established, in 1953 the first Mass was celebrated at St Mary of the Valley and on June 5, 1955 the first Mass was offered in the "old Church which is pictured below and is used for religious education at this time.
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