Immaculate Conception United States

Patroness of the United States

Feast: December 8

Marian devotion had great influence on Catholics in the United States. The French Jesuits were missionaries and explorers in the Louisiana territory that extended northward along the Mississippi River into Canada. They honored the Mother of God with the title of the Immaculate Conception.

Jacques Marquette, S.J., named the Mississippi River the "River of the Immaculate Conception" in 1673.

Bishop John Carroll had a great influence on the spread of Marian devotion in the United States. Ordained a priest in 1769, he was a man who carried in his heart a great Marian spirituality. He was elected the first bishop of Baltimore and the see was formally established on November 6, 1789. The day he chose for his episcopal consecration was the feast of the Assumption (August 15, 1790), the title under which he chose her as patroness of his diocese, which at that time included the entire United States.

The cathedral that Bishop Carroll began, where the many plenary and provincial councils of Baltimore later took place, is dedicated to the Assumption of Our Lady. Devotion to Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception flourished in the nineteenth century.

At the sixth provincial council of Baltimore in 1846, the bishops of the United States requested that the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception be named patroness of the Catholic Church in the United States. The decree was confirmed by Pope Pius IX the following year (1847). This decision was confirmed when in 1854 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed by the Universal Church and also by the apparitions at Lourdes in France in 1858.