CINCINNATI, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - City in the State of Ohio in the United States and seat of a metropolitan archdiocese comprising a territory of about 31,200 sq. km., having as suffragans the dioceses of Cleveland, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Toledo.
In 1948, out of a total population of 1,576,256 inhabitants, the archdiocese counted about 283,689 Catholics (a good portion of them of the Negro race). The clergy is composed of 1 auxiliary bishop, 515 diocesan priests and 329 regulars, with 25 churches, 82 missions, 5 chapels, 1 major seminary, 1 minor seminary, 13 academies and normal schools, 3 colleges for boys, 2 for girls, 4 Latin schools, 43 High Schools and 37 parochial schools with 37,786 pupils. In 1947, 10,975 baptisms were administered, of which 1,782 were of adults. The archdiocese has 10 male and 20 female religious communities.
The northeast of Ohio began to be evangelized as early as 1749, but white colonization had its beginnings there only toward the end of the 18th century. Among the first colonists, Catholics were mainly at Somerset, where Msgr. Flaget, bishop of Bardstown, on whom Ohio then depended, summoned the Dominicans, who, under the guidance of Fr. Edward Fenwick, founded a priory there. As for C., the first attempts to found the Catholic Church there were in 1811. Msgr. Flaget, during his first visit, celebrated a Mass there and in 1821 obtained from the Holy See that Ohio be separated from Bardstown to form a diocese with its seat at C. A suffragan of Baltimore, the new diocese had the same E. Fenwick as its first bishop.
He died in 1832 of cholera, contracted during a visit to his diocese. To him is owed, in particular, the founding of the celebrated Athenaeum of St. Francis Xavier of C. (1829). The emigration of German and Irish Catholics accelerated the consolidation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Ohio. Many dioceses were in fact later erected by the dismemberment of that of C., which in 1850 was elevated to a metropolitan see with as suffragans the dioceses of Louisville (formerly Bardstown), Detroit, Vincennes (now Indianapolis), Nashville and Cleveland, to which were later added those of Covington, Fort Wayne, Columbus, Grand Rapids and Toledo. On May 22, 1937, the dioceses of Detroit and Grand Rapids were detached from the ecclesiastical province of C. to form the province of Detroit; then on Dec. 10 of the same year the dioceses of Louisville, Covington and Nashville passed to the new province of Louisville.