page_title: Catholic Church in the United States
section_title: Organization
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church in the United States / Organization
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago taken by Gerald C. Farinas on Monday, March 26, 2007
context_page_description: The Catholic Church in the United States is composed of ecclesiastical communities in full communion with the Holy See.
  With 23% of the United States population as of 2018, the Catholic Church is the country's second largest religious grouping, after Protestantism, and the country's largest Church or religious denomination. The United States has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.
  In the colonial era, Spain and Mexico established missions that had permanent results in New Mexico and California. Likewise, France founded settlements with missions attached to them in the Mississippi River region, notably, St. Louis and New Orleans. English Catholics, on the other hand, "harassed in England by the Protestant majority," settled in Maryland and founded the first state capitol, St. Mary's City, Maryland. In 1789 the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the first diocese in the newly independent nation. John Carroll became the first American bishop. His brother Daniel Carroll was the leading Catholic among the Founding Fathers of the United States. George Washington in the army and as president set a standard for religious toleration.
context_section_description: Roman Catholics gather as local communities called parishes, headed by a priest, and typically meet at a permanent church building for liturgies every Sunday, weekdays and on holy days. Within the 196 geographical dioceses and archdioceses (excluding the Archdiocese for the Military Services), there were 17,007 local Catholic parishes in the United States in 2018. The Catholic Church has the third highest total number of local congregations in the US behind Southern Baptists and United Methodists. However, the average Catholic parish is significantly larger than the average Baptist or Methodist congregation; there are more than four times as many Catholics as Southern Baptists and more than eight times as many Catholics as United Methodists.
  In the United States, there are 197 ecclesiastical jurisdictions:
  177 Western Catholic dioceses
  including 32 Latin Catholic archdioceses
  18 Eastern Catholic dioceses (eparchies)
  including 2 Eastern Catholic archdioceses (archeparchies)
  including 1 Eparchy (for the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church)
  2 personal ordinariates
  one for former Anglicans who came into full Catholic communion
  one for members of the military (though equivalent to an archdiocese, it is technically a military ordinariate)
  Eastern Catholic Churches are churches with origins in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa that have their own distinctive liturgical, legal and organizational systems and are identified by the national or ethnic character of their region of origin. Each is considered fully equal to the Latin tradition within the Church. In the United States, there are 15 Eastern Church dioceses (called eparchies) and two Eastern Church archdioceses (or archeparchies), the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh and the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.
  The apostolic exarchate for the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church in the United States is headed by a bishop who is a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. An apostolic exarchate is the Eastern Catholic Church equivalent of an apostolic vicariate. It is not a full-fledged diocese/eparchy, but is established by the Holy See for the pastoral care of Eastern Catholics in an area outside the territory of the Eastern Catholic Church to which they belong. It is headed by a bishop or a priest with the title of exarch.
  The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter was established January 1, 2012, to serve former Anglican groups and clergy in the United States who sought to become Catholic. Similar to a diocese though national in scope, the ordinariate is based in Houston, Texas, and includes parishes and communities across the United States that are fully Catholic, while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage and traditions.
  As of 2017, 8 dioceses out of 195 are vacant (sede vacante). None of the current bishops or archbishops are past the retirement age of 75.
  The central leadership body of the Catholic Church in the United States is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of bishops (including archbishops) of the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands, although each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Holy See. The USCCB elects a president to serve as their administrative head, but he is in no way the "head" of the Church or of Catholics in the United States. In addition to the 195 dioceses and one exarchate represented in the USCCB, there are several dioceses in the nation's other four overseas dependencies. In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the bishops in the six dioceses (one metropolitan archdiocese and five suffragan dioceses) form their own episcopal conference, the Puerto Rican Episcopal Conference (Conferencia Episcopal Puertorriqueña). The bishops in US insular areas in the Pacific Ocean—the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Territory of American Samoa, and the Territory of Guam—are members of the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific.
  No primate exists for Catholics in the United States. In the 1850s, the Archdiocese of Baltimore was acknowledged a P
caption: Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral is the mother church of one of the largest Catholic dioceses in the United States.
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