ROCHESTER, Diocese of. - Diocese and city in the State of New York (U.S.A.). A suffragan of New 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 by the division of the diocese of Buffalo (New York). The first bishop, Msgr. Bernard 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, 38 priests among whom were 7 Redemptorists; at his death (1909), after 40 years of activity, the diocese was flourishing with churches and parishes and charitable works, and the Catholic population had risen to 121,000. This growth is due to Irish, German, French, Polish, Italian, Lithuanian and Ruthenian immigration. The bishop wished to give these immigrants, as far as possible, priests who spoke their mother tongue; he also insisted greatly on the creation of Catholic schools and in 1891 began the erection of a major seminary to which Leo XIII granted the faculty of conferring academic degrees in philosophy and theology.
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Gastone Carriere