CINCINNATI, ARCIDIOCESI of. — City in the State of Ohio in the United States and seat of a metropolitan archdiocese comprising a territory of approximately 31,200 sq km, with the dioceses of Cleveland, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, and Toledo as suffragans.
In 1948, out of a total population of 1,576,256 inhabitants, the archdiocese had approximately 283,689 Catholics (a considerable number of whom were of the Negro race). The clergy consisted of 1 auxiliary bishop, 515 diocesan priests, and 329 religious priests, 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 Highs Schools, and 37 parish schools with 37,786 pupils. In 1947, 10,975 baptisms were administered, including 1,782 of adults. The archdiocese has 10 men’s and 20 women’s religious communities.
Northeastern Ohio began to be evangelized as early as 1749, but white colonization there began only toward the end of the eighteenth century. Among the first settlers, Catholics were concentrated chiefly at Somerset, where Msgr. Flaget, bishop of Bardstown, upon whom Ohio then depended, brought in the Dominicans, who, under the direction of Fr. Edward Fenwick, founded a priory there. As for C., the first attempts to establish the Catholic Church took place in 1811. During his first visit, Msgr. Flaget celebrated a Mass there, and in 1821 obtained from the Holy See that Ohio be separated from Bardstown in order to form a diocese with its see at C. Suffragan to Baltimore, the new diocese had E. Fenwick as its first bishop.
He died in 1832 of cholera, contracted during one of his visits to the diocese. In particular, he was responsible for the foundation of C.’s celebrated St. Xavier Athenaeum (1829). The immigration of German and Irish Catholics accelerated the consolidation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Ohio. Indeed, many dioceses were subsequently erected by dismembering that of C., which in 1850 was elevated to a metropolitan see, with the dioceses of Louisville (formerly Bardstown), Detroit, Vincennes (now Indianapolis), Nashville, and Cleveland as suffragans; these were later joined by those of Covington, Fort Wayne, Columbus, Grand Rapids, and Toledo. On 22 May 1937, the dioceses of Detroit and Grand Rapids were detached from the ecclesiastical province of C. to form the province of Detroit; then, on 10 December of the same year, the dioceses of Louisville, Covington, and Nashville passed to the new province of Louisville.