The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville consists of twenty-four counties in central Kentucky, US, covering 8124sqmi. 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.HistoryThe 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.
