CHICAGO, ARCIDIOCESI di. – A city in the State of Illinois in the United States, and the seat 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 dioceses are Belleville, Jolliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield in Illinois. In 1948 there were 1,755,868 Catholics out of 5,110,100 inhabitants, 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 S. Maria del Lago; in addition, a minor seminary. In 1947 there were 6,196 conversions.
As early as 1674, the celebrated Jesuit Giacomo Marquette explored the territory of the present diocese, but it was only toward the end of the eighteenth century that the whites began to colonize II. In 1804 Fort Deaborn was built at the mouth of the Chicago River, and settlers established themselves around II. In 1833, about one hundred Catholics residing there asked mons. Rosati, bishop of St-Louis and administrator of Bardstown, to which Illinois belonged, to provide them with a permanent priest. The bishop sent the abbé Saint-Cyr, who built the first church. In 1843, the progress achieved prompted the Fifth Plenary Council of Baltimore to ask the Holy See to separate C. from the diocese of Vincennes (now Indianapolis), following the erection of the latter in 1834, in order to make it the seat of a bishopric. On 28 Nov. 1843, Gregory XVI erected the new diocese, which Leo XIII elevated to a metropolitan see on 8 Sept. 1880. In C. the XXVIII International Eucharistic Congress was held in 1926. Since 1892, The New World Publishing Co. has been published in C., the official organ of the archdiocese of C. and of the province of Illinois. – Vedi Tav. LXXXIX.
PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS IN C. – On the occasion of the World’s Fair held in C. in 1893, a "Parliament of Religions" was convened in that city from September 11 to 27, organized by the Protestant minister J. H. Barrow. Dignitaries from various world religions were invited to attend. Neither Islam nor Anglicanism officially participated; after some hesitation, the American archbishops decided to take part and entrusted the organization to Mons. Keane, rector of the Catholic University of Washington, who also proposed the topics for the presentations (discussion was excluded) for each day of the congress. The themes proposed for each day were as follows: God, man, religion—that is, the relationship between God and man; the various religions and their comparative study; sacred scriptures; and then the relationship of religion with the family, society, social issues, the prospects for Christian reunion, etc.
According to C. C. Bonney, director of the Exposition, the Parliament’s purpose "was to be understood as the union of all religions against irreligion."
In attendance, alongside Catholics, were "Orthodox," Protestants of various denominations, Jews, and then Buddhists, Shintoists, Confucians, Taoists, and Parsis, all in their sacred vestments.
The session opened with the recitation of the Pater noster by Cardinal Gibbons, followed by all present. Subsequent sessions featured expositions—naturally apologetic—of the various beliefs, though all shared a concern for highlighting the unifying moral element rather than the doctrinal distinctions among the faiths. Separate sessions were held to illustrate the particularities of each religion.
Mons. Keane summarized the results of the "Parliament" as follows: 1) the comparison of religions leads to the affirmation of monotheism; 2) the effort toward world unity logically and historically orients itself toward the historical person of Jesus Christ; 3) His Church must not be merely a federation of distinct bodies but an organic unity, the true mystical body of Christ.
The "Parliament of Religions" in C.—as was foreseeable—did not contribute to unifying ideas or clarifying specific viewpoints in the history of religions; however, it served to emphasize the desire for Christian unity, advocating first and foremost the union of all English-speaking Protestant churches. It also proposed establishing various committees to ensure the periodicity of such gatherings, which indeed took place, though Leo XIII, in a letter to the apostolic delegate, advised Catholics to convene separately or at least to attend such meetings only as observers.