BUCAREST, LATIN ARCHBISHOPRIC OF. – In Romanian București, capital of Romania (999,658 inhabitants in the 1941 census). It became the capital of the principality of Wallachia in 1642, after Curtea de Arges and Târgoviste. The city, which may date back to 1400, owes its name, according to legend, to a shepherd whose name was borne by the oldest church—Biserica lui Bucur.
When Prince Giovanni Cuza I, elected simultaneously to the thrones of Moldavia and Wallachia, chose it as the official residence for himself and his government (1859), the city became the capital of the united principalities and, subsequently, of the kingdom of Romania. During the long reign of Carlo I of Hohenzollern (1866-1914), it adapted increasingly to the new task to which it had been called, to the point of becoming the political and cultural center of all Romanians; it was in this city that the political and spiritual preparation of modern Romania took shape. B., which, as the capital of the State, had become the seat of the patriarch of the dissident Romanian national Church, was, by Pope Leone XIII, in a brief of 27 April 1883, erected as the residential see of the Catholic diocese of the Latin rite, immediately subject to the Holy See.
This Latin diocese inherited an ancient organization for Catholics residing in the Romanian principalities. From 1610 to 1715, the Latin archbishops and bishops of Sardica (Sofia) were apostolic administrators of the Two Wallachias (Oltenia-Muntenia) and of Moldavia. During that period, the oldest Latin parish of B., S. Maria delle Grazie, known as the Baratzia, was built (1624-32) by the Italian Conventual Pietro Paolo Bruni. From 1728 to 1792, the same pastoral charge fell to the bishops of Nicopoli (Bulgaria), a Latin bishopric founded in 1648. Then, until 1863, those same bishops resided in B. The Bulgarian parish of Cioplea, 5 km from B., dates from this period.
The last bishop of that period, the Italian Passionist mons. Ignazio Paoli (1870-85), also became the first prelate of the present period in 1883, that is, Latin archbishop of B., which at that time had no suffragans. He was thus able to complete the construction of the cathedral of S. Giuseppe, begun by him in 1873. Of his successors, the most important was the Benedictine mons. Raimondo Netzhammer (1905-25), who died in 1945 and retired after the First World War, distinguished for his scholarly and literary activity. During the administration of the present archbishop, mons. Alessandro Cisar, a Romanian citizen, the new residence and seminary were built. On 5 June 1930, the dioceses of Iasi, Alba Iulia, Oradea-Mare and Timisoara or Temesvar were made suffragans of B. Until 1940, the faithful of these dioceses, and especially those of the archdiocese, were predominantly foreigners, among them Italians, who built the church of the Most Holy Redeemer. In B. there were secondary-education colleges run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the « English Ladies », the Assumptionists, etc. The Sisters of Charity run a hospital. The situation changed profoundly following the persecution unleashed in 1948 (v. ROMANIA).