Lancaster, Diocese of

LANCASTER, Diocese of. - City and diocese in England. It has a population of 887,007 inhabitants, of whom 111,464 are Catholics, distributed in 88 parishes, served by 157 diocesan priests and 69 regulars, a seminary, 7 male religious communities and 17 female ones; in 1948 there were 583 conversions.

The diocese was created by Pope Pius XI with the apostolic constitution Universalis Ecclesiae sollicitudo of 22 Nov. 1924, by dismemberment of the archdioceses of Liverpool and the dioceses of Hexham and Newcastle. It comprises the counties of Lancashire (north of the river Ribble), Westmorland and Cumberland. It is a suffragan of Liverpool. The Cathedral is dedicated to St. Peter.

The first bishop was Thomas Wulston Pearson O. S. B., consecrated in 1925, d. 1 Dec. 1938; his successor is Thomas Edward Flynn, consecrated on 24 July 1939; the auxiliary bishop is Msgr. Thomas Bernard Pearson, consecrated on 25 July 1949. The diocese is very rich in historical memories, having given many martyrs and confessors of the Church, among whom the Bl. martyrs John Finch (1584), William Marsden (1586), John Boste (1594), James Duckett (1602), Richard Herst (1628), William Harcourt (1679), and the Ven. martyrs George Haydock (1584), George Beesley (1591), Edward Bamber (1646). Many of them suffered martyrdom at Lancaster. Furthermore the Bl. Edmund Campion continued his glorious apostolate in the Fylde (north-west Lancashire). Relics of the martyrs remain, for example, chalices or portable altars used by them, at Claughton on Brock, Fernyhalgh, Catforth and elsewhere. At Catforth pilgrimages are held in the summer. Near Blackpool the great confessor William Cardinal Allen (1520-94) was born, founder of the English seminaries of Douai (1568) and of Rome (1578).

A renowned historian who was born at Winchester, John Lingard, was rector of the mission of Hornby, near Lancaster, from 1811 until his death in 1851. Many missions of Lancashire, in this diocese, date from the times of persecution; among them are mentioned Mary's, Preston, Claughton on Brock, Whitehaven, Fernyhalgh, Newhouse, Great Eccleston, Westby, Scorion.

Enrico Rope