1600 to 1800 During the 17th century, the
Illinois Country was part of the French colony of
New France, which was under the jurisdiction of the
Diocese of Quebec. The first Catholic presence in present-day Illinois was that of a French
Jesuit missionary,
Jacques Marquette, who landed at the mouth of the
Chicago River on December 4, 1674. A cabin he built for the winter became the first European settlement in the area. Marquette published his survey of the new territories and soon more French missionaries and settlers arrived. In 1696, a French Jesuit,
Jacques Gravier, founded the Illinois mission among the Illinois,
Miami,
Kaskaskia and others of the
Illiniwek confederacy in the
Mississippi River and
Illinois River valleys. During this period, the French-Canadian and Native American Catholics in the region were under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the
Diocese of Quebec in New France. With the end of the
French and Indian War in 1763, the British took control of Illinois. Their rule ended after the
American Revolution in 1783 when the British ceded Illinois and other Midwestern territories to the new United States. In 1795, the
Potawatomi nation signed the
Treaty of Greenville that ended the
Northwest Indian War, ceding to the United States its land at the mouth of the Chicago River.
1800 to 1840 In 1789,
Pope Pius VI erected the
Diocese of Baltimore, covering the entire United States. In 1822, Alexander Beaubien became the first person to be baptized as a Catholic in Chicago. In 1833, Jesuit missionaries in Chicago wrote to Bishop
Joseph Rosati of St. Louis, pleading for a priest to serve the 100 Catholics in the city. In response, Rosati appointed John Saint Cyr. a French priest, as the first resident priest in Chicago. Saint Cyr celebrated his first mass in a log cabin on Lake Street in 1833. At a cost of $400, Saint Cyr constructed St. Mary, a small wooden church near
Lake and
State Streets. The first Catholic church in the city, it was dedicated in 1833. The next year, Bishop
Simon Bruté of the new
Diocese of Vincennes in Indiana, visited Chicago. He found only one priest serving over 400 Catholics. Brulé asked permission from Rosati to send several priests from Vincennes to Chicago. In 1837, Saint Cyr retired as pastor of St. Mary and was replaced by James O'Meara. He moved St. Mary to another wooden structure at Wabash Avenue and
Madison Street. When O'Meara left Chicago, Saint Palais demolished the wooden church and replaced it with a brick structure.
1840 to 1850 Pope Gregory XVI erected the Diocese of Chicago on November 28, 1843. It included all of the State of Illinois, taking territory from the Dioceses of St. Louis and Vincennes. In 1844, Gregory XVI named
William Quarter of Ireland as the first bishop of Chicago. This law would allow Quarter and future prelates to construct churches, colleges, and universities in the archdiocese. Quarter invited the Sisters of Mercy to come to Chicago in 1846. Over the next six years, the sisters founded schools, two orphanages and an academy. One of their projects was the St. Xavier Female Seminary, a secondary school that attracted students from wealthy Catholic and Protestant families. St. Mary of the Lake University, the first university or college in Chicago, opened in 1846. On October 3, 1848,
Pope Pius IX appointed
James Van de Velde of the Society of Jesus as the second bishop of Chicago. During his brief tenure in Chicago, Van de Velde built two elementary schools, a night school for adults, an employment office, and a boarding house for working women. The Vatican erected the
Diocese of Quincy in 1853, taking
Southern Illinois from the Diocese of Chicago. The Diocese of Quincy later became the Diocese of Alton and then the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. Many French-speaking congregants accused him of stealing their property. In 1855, the
Sisters of the Holy Cross founded an industrial school in Chicago for girls, both Catholic and non-Catholic. The pope appointed Bishop
James Duggan of St. Louis as the
apostolic administrator of the diocese. On January 21, 1859, Pius IX named Duggan as the fourth bishop of Chicago. Duggan faced challenges in Chicago: the legacy of the decade-long lack of leadership in the diocese, the aftereffects of the
financial panic of 1857, and of the
American Civil War. German Catholics were hostile to an Irish bishop. Irish-born priests were hostile to Dugan's stand against the
Fenian Brotherhood: he denied the sacraments to anyone tied to this secret society. Some clergy faulted Duggan for failing to support the
University of St. Mary of the Lake, which closed in 1866 due to financial problems and low enrollment. In 1859, Dugan founded the House of the Good Shepherd in Chicago as a residence for "delinquent women." Three years later, in 1869, Pius IX sent Duggan to a
sanitarium in St. Louis and appointed Monsignor
Thomas Foley as
coadjutor bishop to operate the diocese. In 1870, a Jesuit educator,
Arnold Damen, established St. Ignatius College in Chicago. In October 1871, the diocese suffered nearly a million dollars in property damage in the
Great Chicago Fire, including the destruction of St. Mary's Cathedral. In 1875, Foley dedicated the new Cathedral of the Holy Name in Chicago, designed by architect
Patrick Keely. Foley invited the Franciscans,
Vincentians, Servites,
Viatorians, and Resurrectionist religious orders to establish parishes and schools in the diocese. In 1876, disagreements between Foley and Mother
Mary Alfred Moes of the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate of
Joliet led her to relocate her order to Minnesota. In 1877, the Vatican erected the
Diocese of Peoria, taking several counties in
Central Illinois from the Diocese of Chicago. Foley died in 1879,
1880 to 1900 In 1880, the Vatican elevated the Diocese of Chicago to the Archdiocese of Chicago making it the metropolitan see for all of Illinois. At that time, it transferred five more counties to the suffragan Diocese of Peoria. From 1880 to 1902, the Catholic population of Chicago nearly quadrupled to 800,000, mainly due to immigration. While the existing Irish and German communities expanded, Polish,
Bohemian, French-Canadian,
Lithuanian, Italian, Croatian,
Slovak and Dutch Catholics arrived in the archdiocese, bringing their own languages and cultural traditions. During his tenure as archbishop, Feehan founded 140 new parishes. Fifty-two of them were
national parishes serving particular ethnic communities, staffed by religious orders from their home countries. The parishes provided the new immigrants with familiar fraternal organizations, music, and language, safe from
xenophobia and anti-Catholic discrimination. A strong supporter of Catholic education, Feehan promoted it with an exhibition at the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago "Archbishop Feehan believed a strong system of Catholic education would solve the problem of inconsistent religious instruction at home, and unify a rapidly diversifying Catholic America." He also brought the
Vincentians to Chicago to start what is now
DePaul University.
1900 to 1930 After Feehan died in 1902, Leo XIII in 1903 named Bishop
James Quigley from the
Diocese of Buffalo as the next archbishop of Chicago. Quigley also established parishes for Italian and
Lithuanian immigrants. "Chicago's urban parishes flourished as an important spiritual, cultural, and educational component of Chicago's life."
Pope Pius X erected the
Diocese of Rockford in 1907, with 12 counties transferred from the Archdiocese of Chicago. In 1910, Quigley approached Francis X. McCabe, president of
DePaul University, about the lack of higher education opportunities for Catholic women in the archdiocese. DePaul began admitting women the following year. Quigley died in 1915. The next archbishop of Chicago was Auxiliary Bishop
George Mundelein from the
Diocese of Brooklyn, appointed by
Pope Benedict XV on December 9, 1915. Almost half the Chicago population was Catholic by the 1920s. For decades, the parishes had been building and running their own schools, employing religious sisters as inexpensive teachers. The languages of instruction were often German or Polish. On taking office, Mundelein centralized control of the parish schools. The archdiocesan building committee now picked the locations for new schools while its school board standardized the school
curricula, textbooks, teacher training, testing, and educational policies. In 1926, the archdiocese hosted the
28th International Eucharistic Congress.
1930 to 1960 Mundelein died in 1939. After Stritch died in May 1958, Pius Xll appointed Archbishop
Albert Meyer of Milwaukee as archbishop of Chicago on September 19, 1958. Pius XII erected the
Diocese of Joliet in 1948, taking four counties from the Archdiocese of Chicago along with counties from the Dioceses of Rockford and Peoria. This created the current territory of the archdiocese. On December 1, 1958,
a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago destroyed part of the school and killed 92 students and three nuns. While visiting survivors in the hospital and viewing the deceased in the city morgue, Meyer was overcome with grief. In 1959, the
National Fire Protection Association report on the fire criticized the archdiocese for "housing their children in fire traps". The report noted that the archdiocese continued to operate schools with inadequate fire safety standards. The archdiocese faced $44 million in lawsuits from the families of fire victims and survivors. After six years of negotiations, Meyer agreed to a financial settlement with the victims and survivors.
1960 to 1980 In 1960, Meyer banned parishes from hosting
bingo games in response to reports of corruption.
1980 to 1990 In September 1981, the
US Attorney's Office in Chicago announced an investigation of Cody over the diversion of over $1 million archdiocesan funds to Helen Dolan Wilson, whom Cody described as his step-cousin. That same week, the
Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Wilson was on the archdiocesan payroll, but had no discernable duties. Cody denied all charges of wrongdoing. When Cody died in 1982, the official investigation was terminated.
Pope John Paul II in 1982 chose Archbishop
Joseph Bernardin of the
Archdiocese of Cincinnati as Cody's replacement. Bernardin found an archdiocese in disarray, its priests disheartened by arbitrary administration and charges of financial misconduct under Cody. "With his patient charm and willingness to listen, Bernardin won back the confidence of the clergy and the laity." Within a few months of his arrival in Chicago, Bernadin had spoken personally to every priest in the archdiocese. He also prepared and released an audit of the archdiocesan finances. During the 1983 mayoral election campaign in Chicago, the African-American Congressman
Harold Washington faced bitter opposition from the Chicago political machine. Bernadin urged Chicago Catholics to reject racist attacks against Washington; when he was elected, Bernadin met with Washington the day after the election. the successor group to the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race. The archdiocese also established covenants with the
Episcopal Diocese of Chicago in 1986 and with the Metropolitan Synod of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1989. After Bernadin died in 1996, John Paul II appointed Archbishop
Francis George from the
Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon as the eighth archbishop of Chicago, George was the first native Chicagoan to become its archbishop. In 2011, George terminated the
foster care program of
Catholic Charities in the archdiocese. The
State of Illinois had ruled that it would not fund any charities that refused to consider
same-sex couples as
foster care providers or adoptive parents. George refused to comply with this requirement. In 2011, the City of Chicago proposed a new route for the June 2012
Chicago Pride Parade, a celebration by the
LGBTQ community. However, the archdiocese objected to the new route, saying the parade would pass by Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church during Sunday morning mass. George told an interviewer: "you don't want the Gay Liberation Movement to morph into something like the
Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism." In response,
LGBTQ advocates called for George's resignation, but George said: "When the pastor's request for reconsideration of the plans was ignored, the organizers invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church." City administrators negotiated a compromise plan that delayed the parade start by two hours, allowing it to pass by Our Lady after its mass concluded. Two weeks later, George apologized for his remarks. George died in 2014. Pope Francis named Bishop Blaise Cupich from the
Diocese of Spokane as the next archbishop of Chicago. Cupich announced a major reorganization of the archdiocese in 2015. Approximately 50 archdiocesan employees accepted
early retirement packages offered by the archdiocese. In 2016, increasing costs, low attendance at mass and priest shortages prompted the archdiocese to close or consolidate up to 100 parishes and schools over the next 15 years.
2020 to present On December 27, 2021, following the issuing of the in July and the subsequent issuing of guidelines released by the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in December, Cupich imposed restrictions on the celebration of the
traditional Latin mass in the archdiocese. He banned the usage of the Traditional Rite on the first
Sunday of every month,
Christmas, the
Triduum, Easter Sunday, and
Pentecost Sunday. In 2021, the archdiocese announced plans to combine 13 parishes into five clusters, to minister to regions south of Chicago. The archdiocese had sent the ICKSP in 2021 its new regulations on the use of the traditional Latin Mass. As of 2025, 39 churches in Chicago and 23 in the surrounding suburbs have closed and the number of parishes has reduced from 344 to 216. On May 8, 2025,
Robert Francis Prevost, who was born and raised in Chicago and educated at schools run by the Archdiocese of Chicago, would become the first U.S. Pope, taking the name
Pope Leo XIV.
Sexual abuse ==Churches==