Archdiocese of Atlanta

The Archdiocese of Atlanta (Latin: Archdiœcesis Atlantensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in northern Georgia in United States. The archdiocese is led by a prelate archbishop, who also serves as pastor of the mother church, the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta. As of 2023, the archbishop of Atlanta is Gregory Hartmayer, O.F.M. Conv.

The Archdiocese of Atlanta covers 69 counties in northern Georgia. The cathedral is the metropolitan see of the Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of Atlanta, which covers Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. It includes the following suffragan dioceses:

In 2020, the archdiocese included 102 parishes and missions with 1,200,000 registered Catholics.

Like most of the American colonies, the British Province of Georgia enacted laws to bar Catholic settlement. After the American Revolution and the enactment of the US Constitution, the restrictions on Catholics in Georgia ended. The Vatican in 1784 created the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States, removing the small population of American Catholics from the jurisdiction of the church hierarchy in Great Britain.

Five years later, in 1789, the Vatican converted the prefecture into the Diocese of Baltimore, with jurisdiction over the entire United States. The first Catholic presence in north Georgia was a log cabin mission church in Locust Grove, built in 1800 by a small group of Catholic settlers from Maryland.

The Vatican erected the Diocese of Charleston in 1820, covering Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The first Catholic church in Atlanta, Immaculate Conception, was dedicated in 1848.

The Vatican in 1850 established the Diocese of Savannah, with jurisdiction over Georgia and most of Florida. By the start of the American Civil War in 1860, there were approximately 4,000 Catholics in Georgia. In 1864, General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta with the Union Army. His military campaign had been characterized by the burning of towns in Georgia. Reverend Thomas O’Reilly, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Atlanta, met with Sherman and convinced him to spare not only his church, but four Protestant churches as well.

In 1880, the first Catholic infirmary opened in Atlanta, later to become Saint Joseph Hospital. In 1937, in recognition of the economic and population growth of Atlanta, Pope Pius XI renamed the Diocese of Savannah as the Diocese of Savannah-Atlanta.