EDMONTON, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - Capital of the province of Alberta in Canada, with the dioceses of Calgary and St. Paul and the apostolic vicariates of Grouard and Mackenzie as suffragans.
In 1948 it counted 60,000 Catholics out of 325,000 inhabitants, under the direction of 96 diocesan priests and 53 regulars, with 178 churches, 103 missions, 75 stations, 1 seminary, 2 colleges, 16 schools and academies, 3 schools for Indians, 5 male religious communities (Franciscans, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Redemptorists, Brothers of the Christian Schools and Franciscans of the Atonement) and 22 female communities.
The diocese of E. owes its existence to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, tireless organizers of the Church in western Canada. In fact, on Sept. 22, 1871, there was detached from the diocese of St. Boniface, which contained the present civil provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, a territory of about 1,000,000 sq. km., and a new diocese was created with its seat at St. Albert and as a suffragan of the new ecclesiastical province of St. Boniface, erected the same day and entrusted to the care of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate; the first bishop was a holy and zealous Oblate, the servant of God Vital Grandin. From the new diocese, on Jan. 20, 1891, the apostolic vicariate of Saskatchewan was separated (which in turn became the diocese of Prince Albert in 1907); then on Nov. 30, 1912, the dioceses of Calgary were formed, which was assigned to it as a suffragan together with the apostolic vicariates of Athabaska and Mackenzie, on the occasion of its elevation to a metropolitan archdiocese and its transfer to E., capital on the same day of the new civil province of Alberta (1905).
Because of the heavy immigrations that occurred subsequently, the archdiocese has many French, English, German, Polish and also Ukrainian parishes of the Greek rite.
The cathedral is dedicated to St. Joseph.