James Rogers

Who was James Rogers?

James Rogers was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest and the 1st Bishop of Chatham, New Brunswick from 1860 to 1902.

Rogers was born in Mountcharles, County Donegal, Ireland and emigrated with his family to Canada in 1831. He was ordained a priest in Halifax, Nova Scotia on July 2, 1851 and was installed as Bishop of Chatham in 1860. In 1868, Rogers was instrumental in bringing the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, an order of nursing and teaching sisters, to Tracadie-Sheila, New Brunswick, where they operated a lazaretto. Subsequently, this order also opened a convent in Chatham where they operated a hospital, a nursing home, a school for training nurses and an elementary and secondary school.

Bishop Rogers attended the First Vatican Council where he opposed the declaration of papal infallibility. He invited the Congregation of Notre Dame to open convents in Newcastle, Caraquet, and Saint-Louis de Kent. His later years were overshadowed by growing tensions between French and Irish residents in his diocese.