American Catholics

Catholic Church in the United States
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C., is the largest Catholic church building in North America.
Classification	Catholic
Polity	Episcopal
Region	United States, Puerto Rico, and other territories of the United States
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Founder	Bishop John Carroll
Origin	1789
Members	70,412,021 (as of 2017)

The Catholic Church in the United States is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope. With 77.4 million members, it is the largest religious denomination in the United States, comprising 22% of the population as of 2017. The United States has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines, the largest Catholic minority population, and the largest English-speaking Catholic population.

Catholicism arrived in what is now the United States in the earliest days of the European colonization of the Americas. The first Catholics were Spanish missionaries who came with Christopher Columbus to the New World on his second voyage in 1493. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they established missions in what are now Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Texas and later in California.French colonization in the early 18th century saw missions established in Louisiana, St. Louis, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, the Alabamas, Natchez, Yazoo, , Arkansas, Illinois, and Michigan. In 1789 the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the first diocese established in the United States and John Carroll, whose brother Daniel was one of five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation (1778) and the United States Constitution (1787), was the first American bishop.John McCloskey was the first American cardinal in 1875.