Bishop of Louisville

Archdiocese of Louisville Archidioecesis Ludovicopolitana

Location
Country	United States
Territory	Central Kentucky
Ecclesiastical province	Archdiocese of Louisville
Metropolitan	Louisville, Kentucky
Statistics
Population - Total - Catholics	(as of 2018) 1.1 million 218,000 (17.7%)
Parishes	110
Schools	46 K-12 Schools 3 Colleges/Universities
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	April 8, 1808
Cathedral	Cathedral of the Assumption
Patron saint	Saint Joseph Joseph the Betrothed Joseph the Worker
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Archbishop	Joseph Edward Kurtz Archbishop of Louisville
Map

Website
www.archlou.org

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville consists of twenty-four counties in the central American state of Kentucky, covering 8,124 square miles (21,040 km²). It is the seat of the Metropolitan Province of Louisville, which comprises the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. The cathedral church of the archdiocese is the Cathedral of the Assumption.

The Diocese began in 1808 when the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bardstown centered in Bardstown, Kentucky, which was then a thriving frontier settlement. It was established along with the dioceses of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia by Pope Pius VII, (1742–1823, served 1800–1823), out of the territory of the Diocese of Baltimore, the first Catholic diocese in the United States, which was first "erected" (established) in 1789 with the first bishop in the U.S.A., John Carroll, who was ordained/consecrated in Britain in 1790. Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the U.S. in April 2008 celebrated the 200th anniversary of the creation of these wider dioceses and the elevation of Baltimore to an archdiocese (known as "The Premier See"). When founded, the Bardstown Diocese included most of the new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan—the western territories of America to the Mississippi River and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.