Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paderborn

Archdiocese of Paderborn Archidioecesis Paderbornensis Erzbistum Paderborn
Paderborn Cathedral
Location
Country	Germany
Territory	Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia
Ecclesiastical province	Paderborn
Statistics
Area	14,754 km2 (5,697 sq mi)
Population - Total - Catholics	(as of 2004) 4,900,000 1,757,474 (35.9%)
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	799
Cathedral	Paderborn Cathedral
Patron saint	St. Kilian St. Liborius
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Archbishop	Hans-Josef Becker Archbishop of Paderborn
Auxiliary Bishops	Hubert Berenbrinker, Matthias König, Dominicus Meier OSB (designated), Manfred Grothe (em.)
Map
Website
erzbistum-paderborn.de

The Archdiocese of Paderborn is an Archdiocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany; its seat is Paderborn. It was a diocese from its foundation in 799 until 1802, and again from 1821 until 1930. In 1930, it was promoted to an archdiocese. From 1281 until 1802, the Bishopric of Paderborn (German: Fürstbistum Paderborn) was also a state of the Holy Roman Empire.

The diocese of Paderborn was founded in 799 by Pope Leo III. In the early years it was subordinated to the bishop of Würzburg. Since 855 the clergy had the right to elect the bishop. The diocese included the larger part of Lippe, Waldeck, and nearly half of the County of Ravensberg.

While the bishopric as a state had been permanently dissolved in 1802, the Diocese of Paderborn, originally suffragan to Mainz Archdiocese (till 1805), was recreated by Pope Pius VII as a suffragan to Cologne Archdiocese in 1821. Through the Prussian Concordate, it was promoted to an archdiocese in 1930, heading the new Middle German Ecclesiastical Province; at the same time, Paderborn lost its districts around Erfurt and Heiligenstadt to the Diocese of Fulda, and two small areas to the Archdiocese of Cologne. The dioceses of Hildesheim and Fulda were made its suffragans.