KANSAS CITY in KANSAS, DIOCESI of. — City and diocese in the State of Kansas in the United States of America. The diocese comprises the following counties of the State of Kansas: Anderson, Atchison, Brown, Coffey, Doniphan, Douglas, Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Leavenworth, Linn, Lyon, Marshall, Miami, Nemaha, Osage, Pottawatomie, Shawnel, Wabaunssee, and Wyandotte.
The diocese has an area of 12,524 square miles and a population of 594,289 inhabitants, of whom 80,000 are Catholics; it has 133 parishes, 16 chapels, 99 diocesan priests and 211 religious priests, 7 men’s religious communities, including the abbey of S. Benedetto, 16 women’s religious communities, 3 seminaries, 5 colleges, and 14 high-schools; in 1949 there were 735 conversions.
On 19 July 1850, Pope Pius IX established an apostolic vicariate for the Indian territory east of the Rocky Mountains, comprising the present States of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, much of Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, and part of Colorado. The first apostolic vicar was the Jesuit Giovanni B. Miège (born 18 September 1815, died 21 July 1884), who travelled by carriage several times throughout the entire immense apostolic vicariate and resigned on 8 November 1874; on 22 May 1877 Pope Pius IX established the diocese of Leavenworth, assigning it to the Benedictine Mons. Luigi M. Fink (1877–1904); he was succeeded by Mons. Tommaso F. Lillis (1904–10), then by Mons. G. Ward (1910–29), and subsequently by Mons. P. C. Schulte (1937), elevated to the archdiocese of Indianapolis in 1946; on 9 November of the same year Mons. G. D. Donnelly was promoted as his successor. The title of the diocese was changed to that of K. C. in K. on 10 May 1947. Patrons of the diocese: the Most Holy Madonna under the title of the Immaculate Conception and s. Giovanni Battista Vianney. The Cathedral is dedicated to s. Peter the Apostle.
(from Stasztaczkow, II, Friburgo i. Briugovia 1927, pl. f. l.) KANT, IMMANUEL — Portrait, Lithograph.