The Church In America.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 40, 2 October 1902, Page 5

The Church In America.

The entire population of the United States, says Salvatore Cortesi, in the New York Independent, which in 1790 was 3,929,214, has become nineteen times as much to-day, but the Catholics have multiplied 300 times, aa, while they were then one-ninetieth part of the people, they have now rißen to somewhat less than onefifth.

The largest centre of the Roman Catholic Church in America is the archdiocese of New York, with an estimated Catholic population of 1,200,000 — that is to say, nearly one-tenth of all the Catholics in the United States — while its numbers surpass those of all the most crowded centres of Italy, including Rome, Naples, or Milan, and only the principal archdioceseß in Europe, such aa Cologne, with 2,528,000 people, and Vienna, with 1,900,000, go beyond it.

So the United States, with the addition of the 6,500,000 Catholics in the Philippines, 1,000,000 in Porto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii has among her inhabitants over 20,000,000 Catholics, without taking into consideration the 1,800,000 who are in Cuba. Therefore, she represents the fourth Catholic power in the world aa regards population, and the first as regards the amount of money she provides for the head of the Church.