The Diocese of Venice in Florida () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory–or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southwest Florida in the United States. It was founded on June 16, 1984.
As Bishop John Nevins resigned for reasons of age on January 19, 2007, he was succeeded by Bishop Frank Dewane. The Diocese of Venice in Florida is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Miami.
Territory
The Diocese of Venice includes ten counties: Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Lee, Manatee, and Sarasota.
History
1500 to 1565
The first Catholic presence in southwest Florida was the expedition of the Spaniard Juan Ponce de León, who arrived somewhere on the Gulf Coast in 1513. Hostility from the native Calusa people prevented him from landing. De Leon returned to the region with a colonizing expedition in 1521, landing near either Charlotte Harbor or the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. His expedition had 200 men, including several priests.
Before the expedition could build a settlement, the Calusa attacked them, wounding de León. The Spanish abandoned their effort and returned to Puerto Rico, where de León died of his wound that same year.
In 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, hoping to find gold in Florida, landed near present day Port Charlotte or San Carlos Bay. He named the new territory "La Bahia de Espiritu Santo," in honor of the Holy Spirit. DeSoto led an expedition of 10 ships and 620 men. His company included 12 priests, there to evangelize the Native Americans. His priests celebrated mass almost every day.Unwilling to attack such a large expedition, the Calusa evacuated their settlements near the landing area. The De Soto expedition later proceeded to the Tampa Bay area and then into central Florida.
Reverend Luis de Cancer arrived by sea with several Dominican priests in present day Bradenton in 1549. Encountering a seemingly peaceful party of Tocobaga clan members, the Spanish decided to travel on to Tampa to meet the tribe. Several of the priests went overland with the Tocobaga while Cáncer and the rest of the party sailed to meet them. Arriving at Tampa Bay, de Cáncer learned that the two priests in the overland group had been murdered by the Tocobaga. De Cáncer himself was later murdered by the Tocobaga.
1565 to 1800
In 1565, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the founder of Saint Augustine and Governor of Spanish Florida, brokered a peace agreement with the Calusa peoples. This agreement allowed him to build the San Antón de Carlos mission at Mound Key in what is now Lee County. Menéndez de Avilés also built a fort at Mound Key and established a garrison.
San Antón de Carlos was the first Jesuit mission in the Western Hemisphere and the first Catholic presence within the Venice area. Father Juan Rogel and Brother Francisco de Villareal spent the winter at the mission studying the Calusa language, then started evangelizing among the Calusa in southern Florida. The Jesuits built a chapel at the mission in 1567. Conflicts with the Calusa soon increased, prompting Menéndez de Avilés to abandon San Antón de Carlos in 1569.
1819 to 1965
In the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, the Spanish Empire ceded all of Florida to the United States, which established the Florida Territory in 1821. For Catholics, the territory was still under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Havana. In 1825, Pope Leo XIII erected the Vicariate of Alabama and Florida, which included all of Florida.
A quarter century later, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Savannah in 1850, including the new state of Florida minus the Florida Panhandle region. However, seven years later, Pope Pius IX stripped Florida from the Diocese of Savannah and created a new Apostolic Vicariate of Florida. Finally, in 1870 the Vatican converted the vicariate into the Diocese of St. Augustine, which included the Venice area. This area would remain part of several Florida dioceses for the next 114 years.
Post civil war
After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, Catholic missionaries from dioceses in Savannah, St. Augustine, and Tampa, began visiting the Venice area. In 1889, the Venice area was placed under the jurisdiction of the Jesuit Order in Tampa. Jesuit priests made regular visits to Bradenton, Fort Myers, Arcadia, and adjacent missions. The first missions and Catholic communities established by these Jesuits in southwest Florida were: