Joliet ILL, Diocese of
City and diocese in the State of Illinois, United States of America. It comprises the counties of Du Page, Kankakee, Will, Grundy, Ford, Iroquois, and Kendall, all in the State of Illinois.
It has a surface area of 4,218 square miles, with a population of 355,573 inhabitants, of whom 93,229 are Catholic. It has 73 parishes, 16 missions, 3 chapels; 73 diocesan priests and 130 regular clergy, 16 religious communities, among which is the abbey of St. Procopius in Lisle; it has 60 priests and 60 female religious communities. In the diocese there are 5 seminaries and colleges with 426 students, 3 colleges, 2 parochial high schools, and 46 elementary schools; in 1949 there were 422 conversions.
The diocese was created by Pius XII with the apostolic constitution *Ecclesiarum circumscriptiones* of December 11, 1948, by separation from the archdiocese of Chicago and the dioceses of Peoria and Rockford, elevating the church of St. Raymond Nonnatus to cathedral status. The diocese is a suffragan of Chicago.