Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston
The Archdiocese of Boston (Latin: Archidiœcesis Bostoniensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in eastern Massachusetts in the United States. Its mother church is the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. The archdiocese is the fourth largest in the United States.[3] As of 2023, the archbishop of Boston is Seán Patrick Cardinal O'Malley.
Archdiocese of Boston
Archidiœcesis Bostoniensis
Essex County, Middlesex County, Norfolk County, Suffolk County, and also Plymouth County except the towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham[1]
Boston
6,386 km2 (2,466 sq mi)[2]
(as of 2021[2])
4,420,879
1,989,396 (45%)
266[2]
April 8, 1808
952 (600 diocesan; 352 religious)[2]
Seán Patrick O'Malley, OFM Cap
The Archdiocese of Boston has six suffragan dioceses:
Territory[edit]
The Archdiocese of Boston encompasses Essex County, Middlesex County, Norfolk County, and Suffolk County in Massachusetts. It includes most of Plymouth County except for the towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham.
As of 2018, the archdiocese had 284 parishes with 617 diocesan priests and 275 permanent deacons. In 2018, the archdiocese estimated that more than 1.9 million Catholics lived within its territory.[2]
History[edit]
Early history[edit]
New England's first settlers were Congregationalists and, in Rhode Island, Baptists. Many of them left England because they were disappointed in the lack of reforms in the Church of England. These dissenters followed Martin Luther and John Calvin in rejecting the selling of indulgences, the celebration of a Latin Mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and papal authority.[4]
As these dissenters set up colonies in New England, they enacted legal restrictions on Catholics, including bans on Catholic worship. Massachusetts made it a crime, with a potential life sentence, for a Catholic priest to reside in the colony.[4]
The political necessity of gaining Catholic support for the American Revolutionary War drove a change in popular attitudes in the colonies. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, written by John Adams and ratified in 1780, established religious freedom in the new state.[4] With the Massachusetts constitution being the first state constitution in the United States, its framework of government became a model for the constitutions of other states and, eventually, for the federal constitution.
In 1788, the Abbé de la Poterie, a former French naval chaplain serving in Boston, celebrated the city's first public mass in a converted Huguenot chapel at 24 School Street in Boston, which he named Holy Cross Church. Two refugees from the French Revolution ministering to Boston's Catholic population at the turn of the century, Reverends Francis Anthony Matignon and John Cheverus, raised the funds to build a larger building, the Church of the Holy Cross. These buildings no longer exist, but they were the foundation of the Catholic Church in Massachusetts.[5]
Coat of arms[edit]
The coat of arms of the archdiocese, shown in the information box to the right at the top of this article, has a blue shield with a gold cross and a gold "trimount" over a silver and blue "Barry-wavy" at the base of the shield. The "trimount" of three coupreaux represents the City of Boston, the original name of which was Trimountaine in reference to the three hills on which the city's original settlement stood. The cross, fleurettée, honors the Cathedral of the Holy Cross while also serving as a reminder that the first bishop of Boston and other early ecclesiastics were natives of France. The "Barry-wavy" is a symbol of the sea, alluding to Boston's role as a major seaport whose first non-indigenous settlers came from across the sea.[17]
Communications media[edit]
The diocesan newspaper The Pilot has been published in Boston since 1829.
The archdiocese's Catholic Television Center, founded in 1955, produces programs and operates the cable television network CatholicTV. From 1964 to 1966, it owned and operated a broadcast television station under the call letters WIHS-TV.
Other facilities[edit]
The archdiocese previously used a headquarters facility in Brighton but sold it to Boston College in 2004 for $107,400,000.[30]
Steward Health Care System operates the former archdiocesan hospitals of Caritas Christi Health Care.