CHICAGO, ARCHDIOCESE OF. – A city in the State of Illinois in the United States, and the see of a metropolitan archdiocese comprising the counties of Cook, Lake, Du Page, Kankakee, Will, and Grundy in Illinois, with a total area of 10,136 sq. km. Its suffragan sees are the dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield in Illinois. In 1948, the Catholics numbered 1,755,868 out of a total population of 5,110,100, under the direction of the cardinal archbishop, three auxiliary bishops, 1,113 diocesan priests, and 942 religious belonging to 25 institutions, with 549 churches, 447 parishes, a seminary, a Pontifical theological faculty founded on 20 Sept. 1929, and a college in Rome, all dedicated to Our Lady of the Lake; in addition, there is a minor seminary. In 1947, there were 6,190 conversions.
As early as 1674, the renowned Jesuit Jacques Marquette explored the territory of the present diocese, but it was not until the end of the 18th century that white settlers began to colonize II. In 1804, Fort Dearborn was built at the mouth of the Chicago River, and settlers established themselves around II. In 1833, about a hundred Catholics residing there petitioned Msgr. Rosati, Bishop of St. Louis and Administrator of Bardstown, to which Illinois then belonged, for a resident priest. The bishop sent Abbot Saint-Cyr, who built the first church. By 1843, the progress made prompted the Fifth Plenary Council of Baltimore to request the Holy See to separate Chicago from the Diocese of Vincennes (now Indianapolis), from which it had been part since the latter’s erection in 1834, in order to establish it as a new see. On 28 Nov. 1843, Gregory XVI erected the new diocese, which was raised to the status of a metropolitan see by Leo XIII on 8 Sept. 1880. The 28th International Eucharistic Congress was held in Chicago in 1926. Since 1892, *The New World* has been published in Chicago by the Publishing Co. of the same name, the official organ of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the ecclesiastical province of Illinois. – See Plate LXXXIX.