Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City

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Basic information
Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City
Dioecesis Civitatis Lacus Salsi
Cathedral of the Madeleine, as seen from behind, facing east.
Location	Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Territory	State of Utah
Population	150,000 baptized^[1]
Rite	Roman Rite
Patron	Mary Magdalene, St. Joseph
Ecclesiastical province	Archdiocese of San Francisco
Established	January 27, 1891
Cathedral	Cathedral of the Madeleine
Bishop	Bishop of Salt Lake City
Website	http://www.utahcatholicdiocese.org/
Current leadership
Pope	Benedict XVI
Metropolitan	George Hugh Niederauer Archbishop of San Francisco
Diocesan Bishop	John Charles Wester Bishop of Salt Lake city

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, officially in Latin Dioecesis Civitatis Lacus Salsi, is a diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. It comprises the entire state of Utah. Also known as the Utah Catholic Church or the See of Salt Lake City, its mother church is the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City. John Charles Wester is the current and ninth bishop.

Salt Lake City is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, along with the dioceses of Honolulu, Las Vegas, Oakland, Reno, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Stockton. The Metropolitan is the former Salt Lake City ordinary, Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer.

1 History
2 List of Bishops
3 High Schools
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] History

In 1871 Fr. Patrick Walsh built the first Catholic Church in Utah, dedicating it to St. Mary Magdalene. Father (later Bishop) Lawrence Scanlan arrived in 1873 to become pastor. He took care of the Catholic military men, immigrant miners and railroad workers who numbered in the hundreds. Small churches, schools, an orphanage and a hospital were built, staffed by clergy and by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, to serve the growing Catholic population. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the Catholic community in Salt Lake City was rapidly outgrowing the small church of St. Mary Magdalene. The Church in Utah became an Apostolic Vicariate in 1887, and a Diocese in 1891. Bishop Lawrence Scanlan was the first Catholic bishop of Utah. Ground was broken for the new church in 1899. Construction for the Cathedral of the Madeleine would last nearly a decade, costing a small fortune for the estimated 3,000 Catholics in Utah at the turn of the century. Assistance was obtained from Catholic Mission Societies.^[2]