The Archdiocese of Liverpool () is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church that covers the Isle of Man and part of North West England. The episcopal see is Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The archdiocese is the centre of the Ecclesiastical Province of Liverpool which covers the north of England as well as the Isle of Man.
History
With the gradual abolition of the legal restrictions on the activities of Roman Catholics in England and Wales in the early 19th century, Rome decided to proceed to bridge the gap of the centuries from Queen Elizabeth I by instituting Catholic dioceses on the regular historical pattern. Thus Pope Pius IX issued the bull Universalis Ecclesiae of 29 September 1850 by which thirteen new dioceses which did not formally claim any continuity with the pre-Elizabethan English dioceses were created.
One of these was the diocese of Liverpool. Initially it comprised the Hundreds of West Derby, Leyland, Fylde, Amounderness and Lonsdale in Lancashire and the Isle of Man.
In the early period from 1850 the diocese was a suffragan of the Metropolitan See of Westminster, but a further development was the creation under Pope Pius X on 28 October 1911, of a new Province of Liverpool (also known as the Northern Province).
Location
The archdiocese covers an area of 1,165 km² (450 sq. mi.) of the west of the County of Lancashire south of the Ribble (West Lancashire and part of South Ribble), parts of Merseyside, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, the historic Hundreds of West Derby and Leyland and the Isle of Man. The see is in the City of Liverpool, where the archbishop's cathedra or seat is located in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, which was dedicated on 14 May 1967.
The central office building known as the Liverpool Archdiocesan Centre for Evangelisation (LACE). The address is LACE, Croxteth Drive, Liverpool, L17 1AA. The main telephone number is 0151 522 1000.
Archdiocesan Statistics 2018
Compiled 3 December 2018
Catholic Population 2017: 441,000
Parishes: 157
Priests (Diocesan & Religious): 190
Houses of Religious Brothers: 5
Convents of Religious Sisters: 54
Permanent Deacons: 97
Catholic Schools & Colleges
Primary Schools: 184
High Schools: 27
Academies: 7
Sixth Form Colleges: 2
Extra-Diocesan: 4
Independent: 4
Archbishop and Metropolitan
On 21 March 2014 Pope Francis appointed bishop Malcolm McMahon as the ninth archbishop of Liverpool. Bishop McMahon was enthroned as Archbishop of Liverpool on 1 May 2014.
Bishop Thomas Anthony Williams was previously appointed Apostolic Administrator during the sede vacante, until the appointment of a new archbishop, following the resignation of Archbishop Patrick Kelly, with effect from 28 February 2013.
Cathedral Church
The Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (usually shortened to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral) is a Catholic cathedral in Liverpool, England. It replaced the Pro-Cathedral of St. Nicholas, Copperas Hill. The cathedral is the seat of the archbishop of Liverpool, the mother church of Liverpool's Catholics, and the metropolitan church of the Catholic Church's northern province in England.
In 1853 Bishop Goss awarded the commission for the building of a new Catholic cathedral to Edward Welby Pugin (1833–1875), the son of Augustus Welby Pugin, the joint architect of the Houses of Parliament and champion of the Gothic Revival. By 1856 the Lady Chapel of the new cathedral had been completed on a site adjacent to the Catholic Institute on Saint Domingo Road, Everton. Due to financial restrictions work on the building ceased at this point and the Lady Chapel now named Our Lady Immaculate served as parish church to the local Catholic population until its demolition in the 1980s.
Following purchase of the present site at Brownlow Hill in 1930 Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944) was commissioned to provide a design which would be an appropriate response to the Gilbert Scott-designed Neo-gothic Anglican cathedral then emerging at the other end of Hope Street. Lutyens' design would have created a massive classical/Byzantine structure that would have become the second-largest church in the world. It would have had the world's largest dome. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 5 June 1933, but again financial restrictions caused the abandonment of this plan after construction of the crypt.
