Sioux City, Diocese of
SIOUX CITY, DIOCESE OF
The diocese of Sioux City (Sioupolitana ), Iowa, was established Jan. 15, 1902. A suffragan of the Metropolitan See of Dubuque, it embraces the 24 northwest counties of Iowa, an area of 14,518 square miles.
History. Catholics first settled in the area around the middle of the nineteenth century. The first Catholic service was celebrated in November of 1850 by a Jesuit missionary, Father Christian Hoecken. Dubuque's first bishop, Mathias Loras, assigned the first resident pastor to northwest Iowa in 1857 at Corpus Christi Parish of Fort Dodge. From 1850 to 1920, as the agricultural frontier moved across the Midwest, Northwest Iowa received many thousands of European immigrants. The earliest were Irish, and about 75 Irish-born priests served during the era. The numbers of Irish were rivaled only by the Germans, and several towns contained both English-speaking and Germanic parishes. Other nationalities of Catholic immigrants, several of which formed ethnic parishes, were French, Bohemian, Polish, Italian, Syrian, Lithuanian, Croatian, and Luxembourger. After the 1980s, the diocesan Catholic population became more diverse, with the immigration of significant numbers of Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Hispanic immigrants.
Bishops. The first bishop of the Diocese of Sioux City, Philip Joseph Garrigan (1840–1919), an Irish immigrant, had served as the first vice-rector of The catholic university of america, Washington, D.C., before being named as the first Bishop of Sioux City, May 25, 1902. The newly established diocese had a Catholic population of about 50,000 served by 116 parishes (84 with resident priests). During his administration, the number of schools doubled, and three of every four children were enrolled in Catholic schools.
Irish-born Bishop Edmond Heelan (1868–1948) spent nearly his entire priestly life in Sioux City. He was appointed auxiliary to Bishop Garrigan in 1918 and succeeded to the See on March 8, 1920, after Garrigan's death. Bishop Heelan witnessed the slowing of the flow of immigrants and the hardships brought by world and national events in the wake of World War I, but carried on the expansion of parishes, missions, and schools begun by Garrigan. He also helped establish Briar Cliff College in Sioux City in 1929.
Joseph Maximillian Mueller (1894–1981), a native of St. Louis, was named coadjutor in 1947 and became the Ordinary of the diocese on Sept. 20, 1948. Bishop Mueller was widely recognized for the bold and highly successful consolidation of high schools, and a tremendous building campaign of parish plants. He also founded the diocesan newspaper, The Globe.
Frank Greteman (1907–1987) was consecrated as auxiliary bishop of Sioux City on May 26, 1965, at the Cathedral of the Epiphany in Sioux City, and became the Ordinary in 1970. Born in Willey, Iowa, he was the first priest native to northwest Iowa to become a bishop and the first Iowa priest to serve his home diocese as bishop. Bishop Greteman completed the consolidation of the diocesan high schools and carried out re-organization of the diocesan elementary schools.
The Episcopal ordination of Bishop Lawrence Soens (born 1926), a native of the Diocese of Davenport, took place on Aug. 17, 1983, at the Cathedral of the Epiphany. He established and expanded many religious programs in the diocese. Upon Soens' retirement, Bishop Daniel DiNardo (born 1949), a native of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, was ordained for the diocese on Oct. 7, 1997, and became the sixth Ordinary in 1998.
[r. roder]