SHREWSBURY, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in England. It has a population of 1,331,706 inhabitants (1931 census) of whom 106,000 are Catholics (1950 census), distributed in 81 parishes, served by 138 diocesan priests and 85 regulars, 13 male religious communities and 27 female; in 1950 there were 250 conversions, 3,301 infant baptisms, 1,450 marriages (including mixed ones). The diocese has 106 public churches, 27 private ones, and 42 elementary schools.
It was erected by Pope Pius IX in 1850 and comprises the counties of Shropshire and Cheshire. Before 1895 it also included the Welsh counties of Carnarvon, Flint, Denbigh, Merioneth, Montgomery and Anglesey; these were constituted in 1895 as the Apostolic Vicariate of Wales, and then in 1898 as the Diocese of Menevia. The patrons are Our Lady Help of Christians and St. Winefride, whose relics were transferred from Gwytherin in Denbighshire to the Benedictine abbey of S. (founded in 1883) in 1138. It is a suffragan of Birmingham. Since 1949 the bishop has been John A. Murphy, who had as his predecessors James Brown (1851-81), Edmund Knight (1881-95), John Carroll (1895-1967), Samuel Webster Allen (1897-1908), Hugh Singleton (1908-34), Ambrose James Moriarty (1934-49). The Cathedral (1856) is dedicated to Our Lady Help of Christians and St. Peter of Alcantara.
