SAN CLODOALDO, DIOCESI di. - Diocese and city in the State of Minnesota (U.S.A.), suffragan of the archdiocese of S. Paolo di Minnesota.
The diocese has an area of 12,251 sq. km., with a population of 321,452 inhabitants, of whom 90,882 are Catholics; it has 139 parishes served by 157 diocesan priests and 28 regular clergy; 3 male and 5 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 350).
The history of the diocese begins in 1851 with the colonization of the country by whites. The Austrian priest F. Pierce, who had come to Minnesota as a missionary among the Chippewa, found the land suitable for cultivation and immediately sent a series of articles to German Catholic newspapers, resulting in the arrival of a great number of Catholic immigrants. In 1856, mons. Gius. Cretin, bishop of S. Paolo (Minnesota), sent there three Benedictines, who the following year founded a college, now the flourishing Università di S. Giovanni (S. John's University).
The first Benedictine abbot, Ruperto Seidenbusch, was appointed apostolic vicar of Northern Minnesota on 30 May 1875, with his seat at S. C.; when the vicariate was erected into a diocese on 22 Sept. 1889, its first bishop was Seidenbusch’s successor, mons. Otto Zardetti, who was subsequently elected archbishop of Bucarest in 1894.