Syracuse

(Syracusensis)

The Diocese of Syracuse, in the State of New York, comprises the counties of Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga, and Oswego, and contains an area of 5626 square miles, a little more than one-ninth of the entire state. Out of a population of 609,041, about 161,000, or a little more than one-fourth, are Catholics.

Missions among the Indians

The Oneidas and the Onondagas occupied lands near the shores of the lakes which bear their names. The first chosen president of the Iroquois was the venerable Ato-tao-ho, a famous Onondaga chief. The Onondagas were the central nation of the League, and not far from the present episcopal city, on Indian Hill, between the ravines formed by the west and middle branches of Limestone Creek in the town of Pompey, about two miles south of Manlius, was the village of Onondaga, the seat of government for the League of the Five Nations. It is probable that some of the Franciscan Fathers of the Recollect reform, whom Champlain obtained from France in 1614 to minister to the French settlers and convert the natives, visited this territory and offered up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on the shores of Lakes Onondaga or Oneida, and perhaps what is now Oswego as early as 1615. Father Le Moyne, S.J., however, must be considered the real founder of the Church in the Diocese of Syracuse. Fathers Joseph Chaumonot and Claude Dablon were selected to begin the work of evangelization. They said Mass on the chosen site Sunday, 14 November 1654. A little bark chapel was soon constructed with the assistance of the Indians. St. John the Baptist had been adopted as the patron of the mission, and it was doubtless under his patronage that this first chapel on the soil of New York was dedicated. Another chapel was built for the French settlers, St. Mary's of Ganantaa (Lake Onondaga). But these first missions among the Onondagas and the Oneidas had but an ephemeral existence. The Iroquois were constantly incited against the French missionaries by both the Dutch and English in Albany. James II ascended the throne of England in 1685 and openly professed the Catholic Faith. While Duke of York (1682) he had appointed Colonel Thomas Dongan Governor of the Colony of New York. Dongan, an Irishman and a Catholic, presided over the first representative assembly of New York which gave us the charter of liberties. Loyal to his Faith and country alike he sought to preserve and perpetuate the Catholic missions among the Iroquois without strengthening French influence in the colony. For this purpose he brought over with him three English Jesuits: Thomas Harvey, Charles Gage, and Henry Harrison. He established a Latin school in New York and placed it in charge of these Jesuits. He planned also to establish a settlement of Irish Catholics in the interior of the colony, very likely somewhere within the limits of the present diocese. But when Dongan fell all prospect of liberty for Catholic worship in the colony of New York disappeared, and the hope was expressed at the time of his downfall "that Papists would not henceforth come so freely to settle in the colony". Governor Bellemont of New York secured the passage of a law by the colonial legislature punishing with perpetual imprisonment any priest remaining in the province or coming after 1 November 1700, and any priest who escaped from his dungeon was liable to the penalty of death if he should be retaken. To harbour a Catholic was to incur a fine of £250 and to stand in the pillory for three days. Under these circumstances the Jesuit missions were necessarily closed among the Five Nations. The mission of Ogdensburg, established a little later for the Onondagas, and the Oneidas by Abbé François Picquet, a