Florida was part of the Church of Havana, Cuba, as early as 1606. Bishops of Santiago de Cuba ruled over souls in Florida until 1763. That was the year England acquired Florida from Spain. The first mass migration to the New World took place when hundreds of Catholics from Minorca settled in New Smyrna in 1768. They were members there of San Pedro Church until they abandoned that Atlantic coastal site in 1777 and moved north to St. Augustine.

In 1858, Bishop Augustin Verot became Vicar Apostolic of part of Georgia and Florida. He became Bishop of Savannah in 1861 and remained Vicar Apostolic of Florida. In 1870, the Diocese of St. Augustine was erected with Bishop Verot the first bishop in this only diocese in Florida. (In 1958, the southern half of the state was erected as the Diocese of Miami. It was created an archdiocese in 1968. In 1968, two new dioceses were formed in Central Florida, the Diocese of Orlando and the Diocese of St. Petersburg.) After the Civil War, some stability followed as Bishop Verot and French priests he recruited covered Florida missions. A St. Louis, Missouri priest, Reverend Michael McFaul, began the first parish register extant in Central Florida at Maitland in 1882. It later became the register of St. James Cathedral Church, Orlando. Other bishops of St. Augustine who governed what is now Orlando Diocese were Bishops John Moore, William J. Kenny, Michael J. Curley, Patrick Barry, Joseph P. Hurley and Paul Tanner.

In 1968, William D. Borders became first Bishop of Orlando, serving until his appointment as Archbishop of Baltimore in 1974. Archbishop Borders retired in 1989 and lives in Baltimore. The second bishop of Orlando, Bishop Thomas J. Grady, served from 1974 to 1990. The Diocese of Orlando has undergone rapid growth in the past 20 years, and Catholics in the diocese are an estimated 10 percent of the total population. Under Bishop Grady's leadership, the sister diocese of San Juan de la Maguana was adopted in the Dominican Republic, San Pedro was developed as a spiritual life center, and the tourist ministry brought about the establishment of Mary, Queen of the Universe Shrine dedicated August 1993. Bishop Dorsey was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Miami on January 10, 1986, and ordained for the Archdiocese of Miami on March 19th of that year. Bishop Norbert M. Dorsey, C.P., S.T.D., was installed as third Bishop of Orlando on May 25, 1990. Bishop Thomas Wenski was recently named Coadjutor.