Bishopric of Cologne

Archdiocese of Cologne Archidioecesis Coloniensis Erzbistum Köln
Coat of Arms of the Archdiocese of Cologne
Location
Country	Germany
Ecclesiastical province	Cologne
Metropolitan	Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia
Statistics
Area	6,181 km2 (2,386 sq mi)
Population - Total - Catholics	(as of 2013) 5,417,865 2,069,152 (38.2%)
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Sui iuris church	Latin Church
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	2nd Century
Cathedral	Cologne Cathedral
Patron saint	St. Joseph Immaculate Conception
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Archbishop	Rainer Woelki Cardinal
Auxiliary Bishops	Dominik Schwaderlapp Ansgar Puff Rolf Steinhauser
Vicar General	Dominik Meiering
Emeritus Bishops	Joachim Meisner Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus (1989-2014) Klaus Dick Auxiliary bishop emeritus Manfred Melzer Auxiliary bishop emeritus
Map
Website
erzbistum-koeln.de (German)

The Archdiocese of Cologne (Latin: Archidioecesis Coloniensis; German: Erzbistum Köln) is an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in western North Rhine-Westphalia and northern Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.

The Electorate of Cologne—not to be confused with the larger Archdiocese of Cologne—was one of the major ecclesiastical principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. The city of Cologne as such became a free city in 1288 and the archbishop eventually moved his residence from Cologne Cathedral to Bonn to avoid conflicts with the Free City, which escaped his jurisdiction.

After 1795, the archbishopric's territories on the left bank of the Rhine were occupied by France, and were formally annexed in 1801. The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803 secularized the rest of the archbishopric, giving the Duchy of Westphalia to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt. As an ecclesial government, however, the archdiocese remained (more or less) intact: while she lost the left bank including the episcopal city itself, Cologne, to the new Diocese of Aachen established under Napoleon's auspices, there still remained a substantial amount of territory on the right bank of the Rhine. After the death of the last Elector-Archbishop in 1801, the see was vacant for 23 years, being governed by vicar capitular Johann Herrmann Joseph v. Caspars zu Weiss and, after his death, by Johann Wilhelm Schmitz. In 1821, the archdiocese regained Cologne and the right bank of the Rhine (though with a new circumscription reflecting the Prussian subdivisions) and, in 1824, an archbishop was established there again. It remains an archdiocese to the present day, considered the most important one of Germany.