Progress of Roman Catholicism
ACCORDING to the statistics of the official directory of the Roman Catholic Church, there are now in the United States alone 15,154,158 Catholics. In the Philippines there are more than 7,000,000, a million more in Porto Rico, 11,500 in Alaska, 42,000 in the Hawaiian Islands, and 900 in the Canal Zone. All told, under the stars and stripes there are 23,329,047 Catholics. A new church and more is built on an average of every day in the year. There are 14,312 churches in the United States, and 17,945 Catholic clergymen in the dioceses of the country. There are 5,256 parishes which have parochial schools connected with the churches, in which 1,360,761 boys and girls are receiving their elementary education. The states having the largest number of Catholics are as follows: New York 2,790,000 (we omit the hundreds), Pennsylvania 1,633,000, Illinois 1,460,000, Massachusetts 1,383,000; and twenty-one others range from Ohio with its 743,000, to Colorado with its 105,000. California is credited with 403,500. This shows that the number of Catholics under the stars and stripes is almost as many as in Austria or in Germany, more than in Spain, and more than in the British Empire. The only country which exceeds it in millions is Italy. Italy has thirty millions, while the United States has twenty-three millions, and Austria and Germany do not reach the twenty-four million mark. There is certainly food for thought in this tremendous increase.