MONCTON, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - City and archdiocese in the province of New Brunswick (Canada), with three suffragan dioceses: Saint John, Bathurst, and Edmundston. Its population is composed mostly of descendants of the Acadians whom the English deported in 1755, after the conquest of New France. The founding of a college on 15 Oct. 1854 marked a new stage in the history of Acadia; the college was later entrusted to the Fathers of the Holy Cross, and the old Seminary of Saint Thomas became Saint Joseph’s College (10 Oct. 1864), with Fr. C. Lefebvre as its first superior.
The ecclesiastical province of Moncton was erected by Pius XI on 22 Feb. 1936, by the apostolic constitution *Ad animarum salutem*. The archdiocese of Moncton has 53,579 French-speaking Catholics, 6,940 English-speaking, and 302 of other languages, out of a total population of 102,875, over an area of 2,887 square miles; it has 53 diocesan priests and 62 religious (Congregation of the Holy Cross, Dominicans, Trappists, Redemptorists), 62 churches of which 41 are parishes, 2 hospitals, a retreat house, 20 missions or mission stations, one university (Saint Joseph’s University, at Memramcook), and one college.