ROCHESTER, DIOCESE of. - Diocese and city in the State of Nuova York (U.S.A.). A suffragan of Nuova York, it has an area of 7,081 miles, with 934,081 inhabitants, of whom 320,700 are Catholics. There are 423 priests, of whom 87 are religious belonging to 10 different congregations, 173 parishes and 47 chapels, 16 female congregations with 1,347 nuns, 2 diocesan seminaries, 1 college, 1 orphanage, and 4 hospitals.
The diocese was erected on 24 Jan. 1868 from the division of the diocese of Buffalo (Nuova York). The first bishop, Msgr Bernardo McQuaid, who later became a champion of Catholic education, was consecrated on 12 July 1868. When he took possession of his diocese there were 60 churches and 38 priests, including 7 Redemptorists; at his death (1909), after 40 years of activity, the diocese was flourishing with churches, parishes, and charitable works, and the Catholic population had risen to 121,000. This growth was due to Irish, German, French, Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian immigration. The bishop wished, insofar as possible, to provide these immigrants with priests who spoke their mother tongue; he also strongly insisted on the establishment of Catholic schools and in 1891 began the construction of a major seminary, to which Leo XIII granted the power to confer academic degrees in philosophy and theology.