The Diocese of the Southeast

The Diocese of the Southeast was established in 2011. It comprises the five southeastern states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Flordia. The present Ordinary of the Diocese is The Most Reverend Irvin Nicholas Plant of Max Meadows, Virginia.

The establishment of the Diocese of the Southeast is the fulfillment of a mission in this part of the United States that was first planned back in 1819-1820 nearly one hundred years before the North American Old Roman Catholic Church was formally was established. Irish Catholics in Norfolk, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina, unable to relate to or to approach Archbishop Marechal of Baltimore due his aristocratic heritage, imperious nature, unsympathetic prejudice and apparent antipathy for them, together with his overbearing French manner and preferences in all things ,to the total disregard for the needs and desires of his non-French flock, had alienated them from his jurisdiction, and they thus petitioned the Holy See for redress of their grievances, and obtained the support of Cardinal Litta in Roma who took up their cause. The case dragged on at Rome for quite some time, and in frustration and despair, they finally approached the Old Roman Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht from whom The North American Old Roman Catholic Church is descended, asking him to assist them by caring for their spiritual needs and by appointing a Bishop for them and to also establish a true and proper a diocese of our Church at Norfolk. Before such an action could take place however, once the Vatican learned of these plans, the Holy See hastily established the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond to prevent the Old Roman Catholic Church from establishing a missionay diocese in the United States. However, the Vatican's plans for a functioning diocese in Virginia would have to wait, for the first bishop of the Riocese of Richmond, resigned his See after a mere eighteen months, returned to Ireland, and the Diocese of Richmond was without a Bishop for the next nineteen years until the appointment the second bishop of the Richmond Diocese.

The establishment of our Diocese of the Southeast is therefore the ultimate completion of a project nearly one hundred years in the planning.