Celebrating our 200th ANNIVERSARY

Diocesan and religious order archives are repositories of the Church’s memory and history.

One way that we know of “Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10) is through documents, like the scriptures, but also through the records that have been created in the 200 years since this Diocese was created. The archives of the Archdiocese of Kingston is full of treasures that offer a glimpse into the Catholic history of Kingston and the wider diocese. Over the course of the bicentennial year, we will be featuring documents from the archives that illustrate the development of the diocese, share stories   of the parishes, and shine a light on the people that form the Roman Catholic community of the Archdiocese of Kingston. 

One of the most important documents in the Archives - you might even say the most important because without it we’d have no Diocese - is the papal brief that created the Diocese of Kingston. A papal brief is an official document issued by the pope and written in Latin. This particular brief was issued on January 27, 1826 by Pope Leo XII, who served as pope from 1823 to 1829.  This papal brief not only erected the Diocese of Kingston but also appointed the Reverend Alexander Macdonell as Bishop of Kingston. The Diocese covered a much larger geographical area than it does today, encompassing all of Upper Canada at the time, from the Quebec border to Windsor. From 1841 to 1904 the original borders of the diocese of Kingston were reduced as several new dioceses were created, including Toronto, Ottawa, Peterborough, Alexandria-Cornwall, and Sault Ste. Marie. On December 28th, 1889, the diocese was elevated to become the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Kingston. 

A Pope would use either a papal brief or a papal bull to create a diocese – the formal term is “erect a diocese”. A papal brief was written on vellum and always has the Pope’s name at the top usually in capital letters, in this case LEO PP XII. The difference between a papal brief and a papal bull is that a papal bull is a more formal document (in form and presentation, not in authority) also written on vellum, but with a lead medallion attached by a cord called a bulla that bears the pope’s seal.