Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City

Diocese of Salt Lake City Dioecesis Civitatis Lacus Salsi
Cathedral of the Madeleine, as seen from the west, facing east.
Location
Country	United States
Territory	State of Utah
Ecclesiastical province	Archdiocese of San Francisco
Metropolitan	Salt Lake City, Utah
Population - Catholics	150,000 baptized[1]
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	January 27, 1891
Cathedral	Cathedral of the Madeleine
Patron saint	St. Mary Magdalene St. Joseph
Current leadership
Pope	Benedict XVI
Bishop	John Charles Wester Bishop of Salt Lake city
Metropolitan Archbishop	George Hugh Niederauer Archbishop of San Francisco
Map
Website
utahcatholicdiocese.org

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, officially in Latin Dioecesis Civitatis Lacus Salsi, is a diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. It comprises the entire state of Utah. Also known as the Utah Catholic Church or the See of Salt Lake City, its mother church is the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City. John Charles Wester is the current and ninth bishop.

Salt Lake City is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, along with the dioceses of Honolulu, Las Vegas, Oakland, Reno, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Stockton. The Metropolitan is the former Salt Lake City ordinary, Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer.

History

In 1871 Fr. Patrick Walsh built the first Catholic Church in Utah, dedicating it to St. Mary Magdalene. Father (later Bishop) Lawrence Scanlan arrived in 1873 to become pastor. He took care of the Catholic military men, immigrant miners and railroad workers who numbered in the hundreds. Small churches, schools, an orphanage and a hospital were built, staffed by clergy and by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, to serve the growing Catholic population. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the Catholic community in Salt Lake City was rapidly outgrowing the small church of St. Mary Magdalene. The Church in Utah became an Apostolic Vicariate in 1887, and a Diocese in 1891. Bishop Lawrence Scanlan was the first Catholic bishop of Utah. Ground was broken for the new church in 1899. Construction for the Cathedral of the Madeleine would last nearly a decade, costing a small fortune for the estimated 3,000 Catholics in Utah at the turn of the century. Assistance was obtained from Catholic Mission Societies.^[2]

List of Bishops

1. Lawrence Scanlan † (November 23, 1886 - May 10, 1915 deceased)
2. Joseph Sarsfield Glass † (June 1, 1915 - January 26, 1926 deceased)
3. John Joseph Mitty † (June 21, 1926 - January 29, 1932 appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco)
4. James Edward Kearney † (July 1, 1932 - July 31, 1937 appointed Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester)
5. Duane Garrison Hunt † (August 6, 1937 - March 31, 1960 deceased)
6. Joseph Lennox Federal † (March 31, 1960 - April 22, 1980 retired)
7. William Kenneth Weigand (September 9, 1980 - November 30, 1993 appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento)
8. George Hugh Niederauer (November 3, 1994 - December 15, 2005 appointed Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco)
9. John Charles Wester from January 8, 2007^[1]

High schools

• Juan Diego Catholic High School, Draper
• Judge Memorial Catholic High School, Salt Lake City
• St. Joseph Catholic High School, Ogden

See also

Catholicism portal

• List of the Roman Catholic dioceses of the United States

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Salt Lake City (Diocese) [Catholic-Hierarchy]
2. ^ Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake

External links

• Diocese of Salt Lake City - official site
• Intermountain Catholic - newspaper of the Diocese of Salt Lake City
• Map of the Diocese of Salt Lake City
• Catholic Hierarchy.org - Diocese of Salt Lake City
• Archdiocese of San Francisco - official site

•  "Diocese of Salt Lake". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.