America's First Bishop was Friends with Benjamin Franklin

November 6th, 2025

22 mins 24 secs

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About this Episode

John Carroll, born in Maryland, was sent to Europe to study, became a Jesuit, and eventually made his way back to the U.S. and somehow ended up on an epic roadtrip to Canada with Ben Franklin. That's not the premise of a strange buddy-cop film, but instead the story of Bishop John Carroll, who was appointed the first Bishop of Baltimore on this day, in 1789, by Pope Pius VI.