Hartford, Diocese of (HARTFORD, DIOCESI DI) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 808

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

HARTFORD, DIOCESE of. - City and diocese in the State of Connecticut in the United States of America, founded by Gregorio XVI on 18 Sept. 1843.

The diocese extends throughout the State of Connecticut; it has an area of 4,899 square miles, with a population of 1,709,242 inhabitants, of whom 670,000 are Catholics (1949).

It has 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 communities, 5 “colleges,” 7 diocesan and parochial “high schools,” and 114 parochial elementary schools; in 1946 there were 1,403 conversions. Immigrants from various nations are so numerous that the diocese has quite a few French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, German, and Hungarian parishes, and even missions for Syrian faithful and for the Maronites. Irish Catholic immigrants had penetrated the Connecticut area as early as the second half of the 17th century. But

Article illustration — (by courtesy of p. Ilarina da Milena O. F. M. Cap.) HARTMANN, ANASTASIUS - Portrait, canvas by Melchior Paul von Deschwanden (1856) - Wesemin (Lucerna), Convent of the Capuchin Friars.

the first Catholic priest to settle there was Rev. B. O. Cavanaugh in Aug. 1828. The first bishop of H. was Mons. W. Tyler from 1844 to 1849.

The Cathedral is dedicated to the patriarch St. Joseph; the diocese is suffragan to Boston.

BIBL.: T. S. Duggan, s. V. in Cath. Enc., VII, pp. 144-46, and Supplement, p. 363; The Official Catholic Directory, 1947, Nuova York 1947, pp. 496-508. Enrico Josi