The Diocese of Salt Lake City () is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church for the State of Utah in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese, formerly of the metropolitan Archdiocese of San Francisco and, since May 30, 2023, of the Archdiocese of Las Vegas.
The mother church of the Diocese of Salt Lake City is the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City. On January 10, 2017, Pope Francis appointed Oscar Azarcon Solis as the tenth bishop of Salt Lake City.
Statistics
As of 2020, the Diocese of Salt Lake City served 324,988 Catholics (10.0% of 3,249,879 total) on 219,887 km2 in 48 parishes with 61 priests (58 diocesan, three religious), 83 deacons, 25 lay religious (3 brothers, 22 sisters) and nine seminarians.
History
1777 to 1878
The earliest Catholic presence in Utah was the 1777 expedition of Francisco Atanazio Dominguez and Silvestre de Escalante from Santa Fe to California. They were the first Europeans to enter present-day Utah. In 1859, Reverend Bonaventure Keller celebrated the first mass in the Utah Territory for US Army soldiers at Camp Floyd. Edward Kelly purchased the first church property in Salt Lake City in 1866.
The first Catholic parish and church were established in 1871 by Patrick Walsh in Salt Lake City. In 1873, Archbishop Joseph Alemany of the Archdiocese of San Francisco sent Reverend Lawrence Scanlan to Utah to manage what was then the largest Catholic parish in the country.
Scanlan worked as a circuit rider, visiting the 800 Catholic soldiers, immigrant miners and railroad workers in the Utah Territory. In 1875, he invited the Sisters of the Holy Cross to Utah, where they founded St. Mary's Academy and Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. Scanlan purchased property in Ogden in 1875 for Saint Joseph's church, which was dedicated in 1877.
1878 to 1891
In 1878, Scanlan was named vicar forane by Alemany, making him the superior of the six Catholic priests in the territory. As a Catholic missionary in an area dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), Scanlan maintained a cordial relationship with the LDS community. In 1879, he was invited by LDS leader John Macfarlane to use the St. George Tabernacle in St. George to celebrate a mass, with accompaniment by the tabernacle choir. Scanlan established St. John's Parish in Silver Reef, a mining town, that same year. St. Mary's Church was constructed in Park City, then a mining town, in 1881.
In September 1886, Scanlan opened All Hallows College at Salt Lake City. He served as a faculty member and lived at the college from 1887 to 1889.
In 1887, Pope Leo XIII erected the Apostolic Vicariate of Utah and Eastern Nevada, taking its territory from the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The pope appointed Scanlan as the apostolic vicar. In 1889, the Marist Fathers assumed control of All Hallows College, operating it until it closed in 1918.
1891 to 1926
On January 27, 1891, Leo XIII suppressed the vicariate and replaced it with the new Diocese of Salt Lake, keeping Scanlan as bishop. That same year, Scanlan broke ground for the new cathedral in 1899. He also opened St. Francis of Assisi church in Provo, the first Catholic church in Utah County. Scanlan established an official newspaper, The Intermountain Catholic, in 1899. He started missions and parishes throughout the new State of Utah. The Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene opened in 1909. Scanlan died in 1915.
The second bishop of Salt Lake was Reverend Joseph Glass of the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles, named by Pope Benedict XV in 1915. Glass renamed the Cathedral of Mary Magdalene as the Cathedral of the Madeleine. He also added distinctly Catholic murals to the building exterior. Some observers said that Glass added the images to confront LDS followers, but others said he simply "wanted to teach Utah Catholics the basic tenets of their faith." Glass died in 1926.
1926 to 1980
In 1926, Reverend John Mitty from the Archdiocese of New York was appointed the third bishop of Salt Lake City by Pope Pius XI. Mitty inherited a diocese deeply in debt. Glass had borrowed money to pay the interest on previous debt, and left the diocese owing over $300,000. In 1931, the Vatican transferred the seven counties in eastern Nevada from the Diocese of Salt Lake to the new Diocese of Reno. To reduce the diocesan debt, Mitty focused on improving the weekly offertory collection. When he left in 1932, the diocese was beginning to pay off its debts, and his successor was able to finish paying them off in 1936.