Universalis Ecclesiae

1850 papal bull by Pope Pius IX re establishing the Catholic diocesan hierarchy in England

Universalis Ecclesiae was a papal bull of 29 September 1850 by which Pope Pius IX recreated the Roman Catholic diocesan hierarchy in England, which had been extinguished with the death of the last Marian bishop in the reign of Elizabeth I. New names were given to the dioceses, as the old ones were in use by the Church of England. The bull aroused considerable anti Catholic feeling among English Protestants.

When Catholics in England were deprived of the normal episcopal hierarchy, their general pastoral care was entrusted at first to a priest with the title of archpriest (in effect an apostolic prefect), and then, from 1623 to 1688, to one or more apostolic vicars, bishops of titular sees governing not in their own names, as diocesan bishops do, but provisionally in the name of the Pope. At first there was a single vicar for the whole kingdom, later their number was increased to four, assigned respectively to the London District, the Midland District, the Northern District, and the Western District. The number of vicariates was doubled in 1840, becoming eight: the apostolic vicariates of the London district, the Western, Eastern, and Central districts, and the districts of Wales, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the North. The legal situation of Catholics in England and Wales was altered for the better by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, and English Catholics, who before had been reduced to a few tens of thousands, received in the 19th century thousands of converts from Anglicanism and millions of Irish Catholic immigrants, so that Catholics came to form some 10% of the general population of England and a considerably higher proportion of church goers. In response to petitions presented by local clergy and laity, Pope Pius IX issued the bull Universalis Ecclesiae restoring the normal diocesan hierarchy. The reasons stated in the bull are: "Considering the actual condition of Catholicism in England, reflecting on the considerable number of the Catholics, a number every day augmenting, and remarking how from day to day the obstacles become removed which chiefly opposed the propagation of the Catholic religion, We perceived that the time had arrived for restoring in England the ordinary form of ecclesiastical government, as freely constituted in other nations, where no particular cause necessitates the ministry of Vicars Apostolic." The London district became the metropolitan Diocese of Westminster and the diocese of Southwark; the Northern district became the diocese of Hexham; that of Yorkshire became the diocese of Beverley; the district of Lancashire became the dioceses of Liverpool and Salford; the Welsh district (which included neighbouring English territory) became the two dioceses of Menevia and Newport and Shrewsbury; the Western district became the dioceses of Clifton and Plymouth; the Central district became the dioceses of Nottingham and Birmingham; and the Eastern district became the diocese of Northampton. Thus the restored hierarchy consisted of one metropolitan archbishop and twelve suffragan bishops. Diocese Bishop Westminster Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman Birmingham William Bernard Ullathorne OSB Nottingham Joseph William Hendren O. F. M. Shrewsbury James Brown Newport and Menevia Thomas Joseph Brown, O. S. B. Liverpool George Hilary Brown Beverley John Briggs Salford William Turner Southwark Thomas Grant Plymouth George Errington Northampton William Wareing Hexham William Hogarth Clifton Thomas Burgess

In his first pastoral letter as Archbishop of Westminster, Wiseman wrote a sentence often quoted later, "Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament".

Publication of the bull was met with an outburst of hostility. The Reformation Journal published an article under the heading "The Blight of Popery". "No Popery" processions were held all over England, and windows of Catholic churches were broken. Guy Fawkes night proved to be a focal point for anger as demonstrated by the burnings of effigies of the new archbishop Wiseman and the pope. At Farringdon Market 14 effigies were processed from the Strand and over Westminster Bridge to Southwark, while extensive demonstrations were held throughout the suburbs of London. Effigies of the twelve new English Catholic bishops were paraded through Exeter, already the scene of severe public disorder on each anniversary of the Fifth. Joseph Drew of Weymouth responded with strong criticism in his essay Popery against the Pope, an Appeal to Protestants and in his satirical verses The Vision of the Pope; or A Snooze in the Vatican, both published in 1851. Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, published a letter protesting against the insolence of the "Papal Aggression". Parliament passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851, making it a criminal offence for anyone outside the "united Church of England and Ireland" to use any episcopal title "of any city, town or place, or of any territory or district (under any designation or description whatsoever), in the United Kingdom". However, this law remained a dead letter and was repealed 20 years later.

In 1861 the name of the Hexham diocese was changed to Hexham and Newcastle. In 1878 Beverley was divided into the two new dioceses, that of Leeds and that of Middlesbrough, the original diocese becoming extinct. The Diocese of Portsmouth was formed in 1882 by the division of the Diocese of Southwark into the Dioceses of Southwark and Portsmouth. In 1895 the Diocese of Newport and Menevia was divided into the Diocese of Newport (later becoming, in 1916, the Archdiocese of Cardiff) and that of Menevia.

Thus, the metropolitan Diocese of Westminster came to have fifteen suffragan sees, the largest number in the world. It had for many years been felt that a division was necessary, but there had always been the fear of causing disunion thereby, especially if, as in pre Reformation times, the division would be between north and south. This was obviated by ignoring the precedent of York and Canterbury, and arranging for three instead of two provinces. Under the new Apostolic Constitution, the Archbishop of Westminster was granted the right to "be permanent chairman of the meetings of the Bishops of all England and Wales, and for this reason it will be for him to summon these meetings and to preside over them, according to the rules in force in Italy and elsewhere." He ranks over the other two archbishops. Instead of the natural geographical division into a northern, a midland, and a southern province, formed by drawing a line from the Humber to the River Mersey, and another from The Wash to the Bristol Channel, the Westminster or eastern province and the Birmingham or western province reach from the south east and south west to the Humber and Mersey respectively. In this way the northern province is contiguous to both the other two, bringing all three into closer intercommunication. In pre Reformation times, an attempt was made in 787 to have a third English province, roughly covering the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia, with a metropolitan see at Lichfield, but in 803 this was abandoned and the bishops of central England were again made subject to Canterbury.