Warsaw (Warszawa), Archdiocese of

WARSAW (Warszawa), Archdiocese of. - Archdiocese and capital city of Poland. It has an area of 12,400 sq. km., with a population of 1,990,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,652,000 are Catholics, distributed in 297 parishes, served by 481 diocesan priests and 199 regulars; it has two seminaries, major and minor, 30 male religious communities and 124 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 443).

The diocese was created by Pope Pius VI on 15 Dec. 1798, by dismemberment of the diocese of Posen; the first bishop was Msgr. G. Boneza Miaskouski (d. 1804). The same Pontiff, following the Concordat with Emperor Alexander I, elevated the diocese to a metropolitan see with the bulls Militutuia Ecclesiae of 11 March 1817 and Ex imposita nobis of 30 June 1818. The first archbishop was Msgr. Fr. Skarbek Malczewski; Pope Pius VII then conferred on the Ordinary, with the brief Romani Pontifices of 6 Oct. 1818, the title of Primas regni Poloniae. The present archbishop, Cardinal St. Wyszyński, has united "ad personam" the archiepiscopal see of Gnesen.

NOTABLE CHURCHES: St. John the Baptist of 1392-98, a collegiate church from 1402, cathedral from 1798, with 9 chapels of historical value and various monuments; Our Lady in the New Town of 1409, church and cloister of the Bernardines of the 15th century, rebuilt in 1533 and 1660, where the relics of the blessed Ładysław z Gielniowa, patron of Poland and Lithuania, are kept (v. SANDOMIRIA); Holy Cross of 1696: with various monuments and tombs of notable persons; St. Hyacinth of 1604-38;