The Immaculate Conception, Patron of the United States

Baltimore's vote before the dogma · Baltimore, Maryland · May 13, 1846

A prophetic gesture before dogma

On May 10, 1846, Archbishop Samuel Eccleston brought together in Baltimore twenty-two bishops of the United States for the opening of the First Session of the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore. Three days later, on May 13, 1846, the prelates adopted a decree of exceptional theological and historical significance: they unanimously elected the Blessed Virgin Mary, "conceived without sin," as Patron of the United States of America. They did so eight years before the Immaculate Conception was declared dogma of faith, ahead of the solemn proclamation of Pope Pius IX in the bull. Ineffabilis God of 8 December 1854. This theological audacity of the American bishops is considered one of the factors that encouraged the Pope to act.

The approval of Rome and dogma

On February 7, 1847, Pope Pius IX formally approved the election of the American bishops. When, in 1854, Pius IX himself proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the United States had been under the patronage of that Marian mystery for eight years. The nexus between the American Church and the Immaculate is therefore prior to dogma itself. This relationship is now expressed in an architectural way in the Basilica of the National Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., the largest Catholic church in North America, built between 1920 and 1961.

A nation entrusted to Mary

The devotion to the Immaculate Conception on American soil sinks its roots in the first Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century. The Baltimore decree was not an invention, but the solemn crystallization of a centenary piety. Every 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception and the festive day of precept in the United States, American Catholics celebrate their national patron in thousands of parishes, many of which bear their name.

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