HARTFORD, DIOCESE OF. — City and diocese of the State of Connecticut in the United States of America, erected by Gregory XVI on 18 Sept. 1843.
The diocese covers the entire State of Connecticut; it has an area of 4,899 square miles and a population of 1,709,242, of whom 670,000 are Catholics (1949).
It comprises 279 parishes, 3 chapels, 690 diocesan priests and 141 regular clergy; 1 diocesan seminary (The St. Thomas Seminary of Hartford); 11 male and 33 female religious institutes, 5 colleges, 7 diocesan and parochial high schools, 114 parochial elementary schools; in 1946 there were 1,403 converts. Immigrants from various nations are so numerous that the diocese has not a few French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, German, Hungarian parishes, and even missions for Syrian and Maronite faithful. Irish Catholic immigrants had penetrated into the Connecticut area as early as the second half of the 17th century.
The first Catholic priest to settle there was the Rev. B. O. Cavanaugh in August 1828. The first bishop of Hartford was Mgr. W. Tyler, from 1844 to 1849.
The cathedral is dedicated to St. Joseph the Patriarch; the diocese is a suffragan of Boston.