From Church to Cathedral
1957 - 2007
Celebrating 50 Years as a Cathedral

Pope Pius XII reigned as the 260th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958.  

 Pope Pius XII was well aware of the rapid growth occurring in the Diocese of Brooklyn particularly in Nassau and Suffolk counties.  The Brooklyn Diocese was established in 1853, when the four counties of Long Island where craved  from the Archdiocese of New York.  As Cardinal Pacelli, Pius was familiar with Long Island having frequently stayed at an estate in Manhasset while he served as the Vatican's Secretary of State.  On April 6, 1957, 7 months after the death of Brooklyn's Bishop, Thomas E. Molloy,  he issued a formal declaration which separated Nassau and Suffolk Counties from Kings and Queens county thus creating the Dioecesis Petropolitana In Insula Longa which is Latin for Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island. 

1957 also saw the creation of two other American Dioceses, New Ulm, Minnesota, and Gary, Indiana. 

Francis Cardinal Spellman,  served as the ninth bishop and sixth Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York from 1939 until his death in 1967. 

As head of the Metropolitan See of the Ecclesiastical Province in which Rockville Centre lies, it was Cardinal Spellman's role to  preside at the installation of  Bishop Kellenberg as the first bishop of Rockville Centre.

Bishop Walter P. Kellenberg, first Bishop of Rockville Centre and Suffragan Bishop of New York.

Bishop Kellenberg was a native New Yorker, born in New York City in 1901.  He was ordained a priest by Patrick Cardinal Hayes in St. Patrick's Cathedral on June 2, 1928.  He was made an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York in 1953 and in 1954 he was appointed as the Bishop of Ogdensburg in upstate New York.

Bishop Kellenberg was appointed Bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Rockville Centre on April 16, 1957 and formally installed on May 27, 1957.  He served as diocesan bishop of Rockville Centre until May 3, 1976 and as Bishop Emeritus until his death on January 11, 1986.

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