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In 1789, Pope Pius VI appoints John Carroll bishop of Baltimore, making him the first Catholic bishop in the United States. Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 1735. His mother came from a wealthy family and had been educated in. In 1784, Benjamin Franklin recommended to the papal nuncio in Paris that Carroll assume the position of Superior of Missions in the United States of North America, which removed American Catholics from the authority of the British Catholic hierarchy. In this role, as bishop and ultimately as the first archbishop in the United States (1808), Carroll oversaw the creation of leading Catholic institutions in the new nation, including the nation's first Catholic University Georgetown University, founded in 1789 and cathedral Baltimore Basilica, built in 1806.