Michael Anthony Fleming, O.S.F. ( – July 14, 1850) was an Irish-born Friar Minor who served as the Roman Catholic Church bishop of the Diocese of St. John's, Newfoundland. He was principally responsible for changing a small mission with several priests in four parishes into a large diocese with over 40,000 congregants and was the single most influential Irish immigrant to come to the Colony of Newfoundland in the 19th century. He was the principal creator of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. John's. Biography Early life Fleming was born about three miles from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. As a boy, Fleming studied the classics for two years at Stradbally, County Waterford, under a Protestant pastor. Encouraged by his uncle, Martin Fleming, O.S.F., he entered the novitiate of the friars in Wexford, and then entered the Franciscan seminary there. Fleming was ordained a Catholic priest on 15 October 1815, after which he was assigned to the friary at Carrickbeg, where his uncle was guardian. His experience in helping to rebuild the Franciscan chapel there marked him at an early age as a "builder", and stood him in good stead for his later work in the Newfoundland. Mission to Newfoundland In 1823, at the invitation of Thomas Scallan, O.S.F., the Vicar Apostolic for Newfoundland, and the Benevolent Irish Society, Fleming was recruited to come and serve as a priest in the colony. From the outset, Fleming proved to be of a very different temperament from Scallan. His ideas about the place of the Irish and Catholicism in Newfoundland were informed by his experience of his close friend Daniel O'Connell's nationalist politics in Ireland. Despite their very different perspectives on many matters, Fleming was promoted by Scallan as his successor, and he was appointed coadjutor bishop of the vicariate by Pope Gregory XVI on 10 July 1829, with the titular see of Carpasia. Bishop Soon after Fleming was consecrated as a bishop by Scallan in the Chapel in St. John's on 28 October 1829, he implemented his Ultramontanist ideology, taking over control of the existing Catholic institution the Orphan Asylum from its lay administrators, the members of the Benevolent Irish Society. Upon Scallan's death on 29 May 1830, he automatically succeeded him as Vicar Apostolic. He then embarked on a systematic expansion of institutional Catholicism in Newfoundland. This included the construction of new parish churches, the subdivision of