**WICHITA, Diocese of.** - A diocese and city in the State of Kansas within the ecclesiastical province of St. Louis (United States of America).
The area of the Diocese of Wichita covers 42,915 square miles and, in 1952, had a total population of 704,721, of whom 45,468 were Catholics. There are 175 diocesan priests and 19 regular clergy.
---
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. - American poet, b. at Haverhill (Massachusetts) on 17 Dec. 1807, d. at Hampton Falls on 7 Sept. 1892. He was the son of a Quaker farmer, and his early career was difficult.
He enthusiastically embraced the cause of abolitionism and devoted much of his poetic work to it, though he was aware that in doing so he made it occasional and limited its intrinsic value. His true vocation lay in the ballad of local color, and the reading of Burns, to whom he dedicated one of his best poems (1854), had guided him in this direction. A complete edition of his verses was published in 1888–90. His works are marked by moralism and political passion.
---
WHITTY, ROBERT. - Jesuit, b. at Poulardrig on 7 Jan. 1817, d. on 1 Sept. 1895.
Ordained priest in 1840, he became one of the most active and zealous members of the British clergy, so much so that the future Cardinal Wiseman soon took him into his service and appointed him his vicar general when, with the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, Wiseman became the first Archbishop of Westminster and Primate. Wiseman entrusted him with the drafting of the celebrated pastoral *From the Flaminian Gate* of 7 Oct. 1850, in which the great event of the rebirth of the Catholic episcopate beyond the Channel was announced to the English people—a pastoral that, as is well known, provoked stormy reactions among anti-papists. Whitty steadfastly supported his cardinal through the tempest and effectively collaborated with him in organizing the reconstituted Church in England. But seven years later, when the battle seemed already won, he renounced the episcopal see that the Primate had requested for him from the Holy See and, at the age of forty, entered the Society of Jesus. After completing his novitiate in Verona and making his religious profession, he returned to England to teach canon law at the Jesuit College of St. Beunos in North Wales. Subsequently, he served as provincial superior of the Scottish province and finally was called to Rome, to the General Curia, as Assistant for England.