CARROLL, JOHN (1735–1815), first Roman Catholic bishop of the United States (1789). Carroll attended Saint Omer College in French Flanders in 1748 and a few years later joined the Jesuits. By 1771 he had been ordained a priest and made his final vows in the order. When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits in 1773, Carroll was briefly under arrest. The next year he returned to his family estate in Maryland, ministering as best he could under the uncertain jurisdiction ex-Jesuits then faced. He joined his cousin, Charles Carroll, and Benjamin Franklin in an attempt at winning Canadian support for political independence, which would open the way for an American Catholic church.

Carroll's church leadership emerged in 1782–1783, inspired by concepts of church-state separation drawn from the writings of Roberto Bellarmino, Francisco Suárez, and English Catholic commentators on the subject. Carroll viewed the relationship between the pope and Roman Catholic congregations...