BUCHAREST, LATIN ARCHDIOCESE OF. - In Romanian București, capital of Romania (999,658 inhabitants in the 1941 census). It was the capital of the principality of Wallachia in 1642, after Curtea de Arges and Târgoviste. The city, which can be traced back to 1400, owes its name according to legend to a shepherd whose name the oldest church - Biserica lui Bucur - is said to bear.
When Prince John Cuza I, elected simultaneously to the thrones of Moldavia and Wallachia, chose it as the official residence for himself and for his government (1859), the city became the capital of the united principalities and, subsequently, of the kingdom of Romania. During the long reign of Charles I of Hohenzollern (1866-1914), it adapted ever more to the new role to which it had been called, so much so as to become the political and cultural center of all Romanians, and in this city the political and spiritual preparation of modern Romania matured. B., which, as the capital of the State, had become the seat of the patriarch of the dissident Romanian national Church, was, by Pope Leo XIII, with a brief of 27 Apr. 1883, erected as a residential see of the Catholic diocese of the Latin rite, immediately subject to the Holy See.
This Latin diocese gathered the heritage of an ancient organization for the 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. In that period the oldest Latin parish of B., St. Mary of Graces, called the Baratzia, was built (1624-32) by the Italian Conventual Pietro Paolo Bruni. From 1728 to 1792 the same charge fell to the bishops of Nicopolis (Bulgaria), a Latin bishopric founded in 1648. Then until 1863 the same bishops resided in B. To this period belongs the Bulgarian parish of Cioplea, 5 km from B.
The last bishop of that period, the Italian Passionist Msgr. Ignazio Paoli (1870-85), also became the first prelate of the current period in 1883, that is, Latin archbishop of B., then without suffragans. He was thus able to complete the construction of the cathedral of St. Joseph, which he himself had begun in 1873. Of his successors, the most important was the Benedictine Msgr. Raimondo Netzhammer (1905-25), who died in 1945, and who retired after the First World War, distinguished for his scientific and literary activity. During the regime of the current archbishop, Msgr. Alessandro Cisar, a Romanian citizen, the new residence and the 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 also Italians, who built the church of the Most Holy Redeemer. There existed in B. secondary education colleges of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, of the "English Ladies", of the Assumptionists, etc. The Sisters of Charity run a hospital. The situation changed profoundly following the persecution unleashed in 1948 (v. ROMANIA).