Diocese of Aberdeen
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- For the Episcopalian diocese, see Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney.
The Diocese of Aberdeen is a Roman Catholic diocese in Scotland.
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[edit] Early history
A see was founded in 1063 at Mortlach by Blessed Beyn. The earliest mention of the old See of Aberdeen is in the charter of the foundation, by the Earl of Buchan, of the Church of Deer (c. 1152), which is witnessed by Nectan, Bishop of Aberdeen. The first ecclesiastical record of the see is in a Papal Bull of Pope Adrian IV (1157), confirming to Bishop Edward the churches of Aberdeen and Saint Machar, with the town of Old Aberdeen and other lands.
The granite cathedral was built between 1272 and 1277. Bishop Thomas Spence founded a Franciscan house in 1480, and King's College was founded at Old Aberdeen by Bishop Elphinstone, for eight prebendaries, chapter, sacristan, organist, and six choristers, in 1505. The see was transferred to Old Aberdeen about 1125, and continued there until 1577, having had in that time a list of twenty-nine bishops.
[edit] Reformation
From 1653 until 1695 Scottish Catholics were governed by prefects-apostolic. After 1695 the Scottish clergy were incorporated into a missionary body by the Congregation of the Propaganda. Scotland was covered by vicars-apostolic.
[edit] Restoration of the Diocese
In 4 March 1878 Pope Leo XIII restored the hierarchy of Scotland by the Bull Ex supremo Apostolatus apice and Vicar-Apostolic John MacDonald was translated to the restored See of Aberdeen as its first bishop.
The Bull made Aberdeen one of the four suffragan sees of the Archbishopric of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, and defined as its territory "the counties of Aberdeen, Kincardine, Banff, Elgin or Moray, Nairn, Ross (except Lewis in the Hebrides), Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and that portion of Inverness which lies to the north of a straight line drawn from the most northerly point of Loch Luing to the eastern boundary of the said county of Inverness, where the counties of Aberdeen and Banff join."
[edit] Early Twentieth Century
In 1906 there were nearly 4,000 Catholics out of a population of 800,000. The clergy consisted of 48 secular priests, 24 regular priests, 57 churches, chapels, and stations; and various schools. There was a Benedictine Abbey at Fort Augustus which had been raised to the rank of an abbey, immediately subject to the Holy See, by a brief of Leo XIII in 12 December 1882. Its building was made possible by the financial backing of Lord Lovat.
[edit] External links
This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
