calsfoundation@cals.org
June 20, 2012
Albert Lewis Fletcher was the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock, the only Catholic diocese for the state of Arkansas. On December 11, 1946, Fletcher was informed that Pope Pius XII had named him Arkansas’s next bishop; he was consecrated at St. Andrew’s Cathedral on February 11, 1947. He was the first native Arkansan ever to be raised to the rank of bishop within the American Catholic episcopacy, and he oversaw Arkansas Catholicism during an era of unprecedented growth and upheaval.