Territory:

    24 counties in central Kentucky covering 8,124 square miles.

Statistics:

Ministries:

Bishops:

Brief History of the Archdiocese of Louisville

The first Catholics who came into Kentucky were among the earliest settlers from the coastal colonies in 1775. They included Jane Coomes, believed to be the first teacher in Kentucky, and George Hart, the first physician. Not until 1785 did larger groups or “leagues” of Catholic families from Maryland begin to enter the region.

These settlers were almost exclusively of British lineage, although many brought with them enslaved African Americans who practiced the Catholic faith. While a few families settled in the Bluegrass, the majority chose an area of promising farmland near Bardstown in central Kentucky. Within a decade, three hundred Catholics were known to live in the area. Even two centuries later, the three rural counties of Marion, Nelson and Washington have significant Catholic populations and are regionally known as “The Kentucky Holy Land.”

On April 8, 1808, Pope Pius VII subdivided the primal see of Baltimore by constituting the Dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Bardstown. To head the Diocese of Bardstown, the first in inland America, the Holy See named Benedict Joseph Flaget, an exile from the turmoil of the French Revolution. Late in 1841, Bishop Flaget would move the seat of the diocese from Bardstown to the city of Louisville, whose population was swelling from the inflow of Germans and Irish. In 1937 Louisville became a metropolitan see (an Archdiocese) and the Diocese of Covington (established in 1853) and the newly established Diocese of Owensboro became suffragan dioceses. The Holy See erected the Diocese of Lexington in 1988. Today, the Archdiocese covers 24 counties in central Kentucky and hosts a Catholic population of more than 200,000 individuals.