SAN GALGANO, ABBEY OF
Galgano Guido, a noble knight from Chiusdino, became an anchorite and withdrew to pray on the hill of Montesiepi, a deserted place by the Merse river, more than twenty miles from Siena, where he died in 1181.
Shortly after his canonization (1185), a small church was built over his tomb, circular in plan, covered by a dome, with a small apse and a portico in front. A small monastery inhabited by Cistercian monks, who came from the abbey of Casamari, was attached to the church. In the fourteenth century a sacristy was added, frescoed by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In 1224 the monks began the construction of a large abbey church at the foot of the hill of Montesiepi.
SAN FRANCISCO IN CALIFORNIA — Church of St. Francis, known as Mission Dolores (1776)
The archdiocese of San Francisco was erected on 29 July 1853. The ecclesiastical province of San Francisco today comprises the dioceses of Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, and the apostolic vicariates of Honolulu and Guam.
The Franciscans landed with Cortés at the bay of Santa Cruz on 3 May 1535 and, under the direction of Fr. Martín de la Coruña, began the mission in California. The bay of San Francisco was discovered on 1 November 1769 by Portolá, and the mission of San Francisco, also called Dolores, was founded on 9 October 1776. For more than half a century the mission flourished under Franciscan direction. In 1834 it suffered from the secularization policy of the Mexican government and fell into ruin.
On 1 April 1840 the Holy See erected the diocese of the Two Californias and appointed Bishop Francisco García Diego y Moreno as its ordinary. Through the bishop’s intervention with the Mexican government, the secularization law was repealed. When Upper California became part of the United States, the Mexican government refused permission for an American to govern the Church in Lower California. Consequently, Pius IX detached all Mexican territory from the diocese of Monterey (or San Diego), erected by Gregory XVI on 27 April 1840, and the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda divided Upper California into two dioceses (29 July 1853): San Francisco and Monterey; at the same time San Francisco was raised to an archdiocese (Monterey becoming its suffragan), and Bishop Giuseppe Sadoc Alemany of Monterey was chosen as archbishop of San Francisco.
The archdiocese of San Francisco has been subdivided several times: in 1861 to form the apostolic vicariate of Marysville, later