Qualla: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 1917, six days after Congress declared war on Germany, a meeting of American Catholic bishops at Catholic University of America in Washington reached a practical decision: the war effort would need Catholic chaplains, and the church needed an organization to recruit, fund, and coordinate them. The National Catholic War Council was founded on the spot. Archbishop Edward Hanna of San Francisco was named the first committee chair. The headquarters moved to Washington. The bishops continued to meet annually. After the war they renamed themselves the National Catholic Welfare Council and continued the work; in 1966 they reorganized again as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops; in 2001 they merged with the parallel United States Catholic Conference to become the USCCB. The wartime organization that began with sending chaplains overseas became, by the twenty-first century, the church's principal national institution - and the one that had to confront what the bishops gradually came to recognize was the worst institutional crisis in American Catholic history.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: From Baltimore to Washington

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before 1917, American bishops met formally only at the great Plenary Councils of Baltimore - in 1852, 1866, and 1884 - to set policy for what was then still a missionary church. The Third Plenary Council in 1884 produced the Baltimore Catechism, the standard religious-education t...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Dallas, 2002

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit InkWeaverAtHeart, CC BY-SA 4.0. Decades of revelations of clergy sexual abuse - which had emerged in scattered ways since the 1980s but reached national attention with the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigation in January 2002 - forced the bishops to meet in Dallas that June for what became the most consequenti...

Image: InkWeaverAtHeart | CC BY-SA 4.0

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: The Politics Question

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. American Catholic bishops have argued for over a century about how to engage with electoral politics, and the question has only grown harder. The conference has been a principal sponsor of the National Right to Life Committee since its founding in the late 1960s. In 1990 the USCC...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Fifteen Regions

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. The American Catholic Church is divided into 15 USCCB regions. Regions I through XIV contain the Latin-rite dioceses; Region XV contains the Eastern Catholic eparchies (Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Maronite, Syriac, Chaldean, Melkite, Armenian, Romanian, and others). The non-territorial...

Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: What the Conference Does

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Behind the political controversies, the USCCB performs a great deal of unglamorous administrative work. It coordinates Catholic Relief Services, the largest American Catholic international aid organization, which operates in over 100 countries. It runs Catholic News Service, the ...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0