Carroll, John (1735-1815)

American bishop. Named head of the US Catholic clergy in 1784, Carroll was consecrated as the first American Catholic bishop (of Baltimore) in 1790, and named an archbishop in 1808. He laboured to establish internal order and counter anti-Catholic discrimination, in part by stressing Catholic commitment to democratic ideals.

He was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to a family of prosperous Catholic Maryland planters. He studied in Europe, where he entered the Jesuit order in 1753, and was ordained. In 1774, a year after the Jesuits' suppression, he returned to Maryland to do pastoral work as a secular priest. A supporter of the patriot cause, he joined in an unsuccessful mission to obtain a promise of Canadian neutrality in the American Revolution in 1776. He cofounded a college that became Georgetown University in 1789. He brought European missionaries to America and started three seminaries.