Diocese of Saint Cloud
The Diocese of Saint Cloud is a diocese and city in the State of Minnesota (U.S.A.), a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul in Minnesota.
The diocese covers an area of 12,251 square kilometers with a population of 321,465 inhabitants, of whom 90,882 are Catholics. It has 139 parishes served by 157 diocesan priests and 28 religious priests, as well as 3 male and 5 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 350).
The history of the diocese begins in 1851 with the white settlement of the area. The Austrian priest F. Pierce, who had come to Minnesota on a mission among the Chippewa, found the land suitable for cultivation and immediately sent a series of articles to German Catholic newspapers, which resulted in the arrival of a large number of Catholic immigrants. In 1856, Bishop Giuseppe Cretin of Saint Paul (Minnesota) sent three Benedictines there, who in the following year founded a college, which today is the front-ranking Saint John's University (S. John's University).
The first Benedictine abbot, Roberto Seidenbusch, was appointed Apostolic Vicar of Northern Minnesota on May 30, 1875, with his seat in Saint Cloud. When the vicariate was elevated to a diocese on September 22, 1889, its first bishop was Seidenbusch’s successor, Bishop Otto Zardetti, who was later appointed Archbishop of Bucharest in 1894.