Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Buenos Aires

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The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Buenos Aires (Archidioecesis Bonaerensis) is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Roman Catholic Church based on the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. The Archbishop since 28 February 1998 is Jorge Bergoglio. Its motherchurch is the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral.

The territory of the Archdiocese has an area of 203 km² and a population of 2,729,610 (2005), of which around 2.5 million are Catholic, served by 182 parishes. It is divided into four zonal vicaries: Flores, Devoto, Belgrano and Centro, in turn subdivided into 20 deaconates.

The archdiocese has 11 suffragans, corresponding to the dioceses of Avellaneda-Lanús, Gregorio de Laferrere, Lomas de Zamora, Merlo-Moreno, Morón, San Charbel en Buenos Aires (Maronite), San Isidro, San Justo, San Martín, San Miguel, and Santa María del Patrocinio en Buenos Aires (Ukrainian).

The diocese was erected on 6 April 1620 as an offshoot of the Diocese of Paraguay, and was elevated to archdiocese on 5 March 1886. Through the years it lost large parts of its territory to the new dioceses of Montevideo, Paraná, La Plata and Viedma.

[edit] List of archbishops

The following is a list of archbishops, after elevation of the diocese on March 5, 1865:

• Mariano José de Escalada Bustillo y Zeballos (1854-1870, first archbishop)
• Federico León Aneiros (Aneyros) (1873-1894)
• Vladislas Castellano (1895-1900)
• Mariano Antonio Espinosa (1900–1923)
• José María Bottaro y Hers (1926–1932)
• Santiago Luis Copello (1932–1959)
• Fermín Emilio Lafitte (1959)
• Antonio Caggiano (1959–1975)
• Juan Carlos Aramburu (1975–1990)
• Antonio Quarracino (1990–1998)
• Jorge Mario Bergoglio (1998–present)

[edit] See also

• Roman Catholicism in Argentina

[edit] References

• (Spanish) Arzobispado de Buenos Aires — Website of the Archdiocese.
• (English) Catholic-Hierarchy — Statistics on the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires.