Charles Warren Currier

Who was Charles Warren Currier?

Bishop Charles Warren Currier was the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Matanzas. His parents were Warren Green Currier and Deborah Heyliger of the Netherlands.

He studied at the College of Our Lady of the Assumption, Roermond, Limburg, the Netherlands, and at St. Alphonsus Seminary in Wittem, Limburg. He joined the missionary order the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in 1875 and was ordained a priest on November 24, 1880 in Amsterdam by Bishop Henry Schaap. In January 1881, he arrived in Surinam for his first missionary assignment where he remained until 1882. In November 1891 he was allowed to leave the Redemptorists and then worked in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

On June 25, 1910 he was appointed Bishop of Zamboanga, Philippines, by Pope Pius X, but he declined. Because he had published articles on Cuban history, he was appointed on April 26, 1913, as the first Bishop of Matanzas. In Rome, on July 6, 1913, he was consecrated by Cardinal Diomede Angelo Raffaele Gennaro Falconio, O.F.M., and assisted by Domenico Serafini, Titular Archbishop of Seleucia Pieria, and Donato Sbarretti, Titular Archbishop of Efeso, Bishop Emeritus of Havana.