How to Cover the Catholic Church

Resources on

the Church

DIRECTORIES

The

Official Catholic Directory

, published since 1817, is also widely known

in church circles as the

Kenedy Directory

because of the publisher’s imprint,

P. J. Kenedy & Sons. It is an annual publication that lists every Catholic

diocese, parish, mission, and educational, health care, or other official insti-

tution in the United States and its possessions, providing addresses, phone

numbers and other information. It also lists every religious order and their

headquarters and monasteries or community residences around the country.

It tabulates data yearly, diocese by diocese and nationally, on the number of

archbishops, bishops, priests, sisters, brothers, baptisms, first Communions,

confirmations, marriages, students and teachers in Catholic schools, and

numbers served by the church’s health care and social services. In the back it

has an alphabetical index of priests with their place of assignment, allowing

the user to locate any priest in the country. It costs more than $300 but is a

valuable tool for anyone who regularly has to contact priests, diocesan offices

or other Catholic institutions and officials in all parts of the country. It can be

ordered online at

The statistical tables of the

Official Catholic Directory

include church data

from Puerto Rico, Guam and other U.S. territories and possessions where the

bishops are not members of the USCCB (among such territories and posses-

sions, only the bishop of the U.S. Virgin Islands is a USCCB member). Each

year the

Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA)

, based at

Georgetown University in Washington, recalculates the Kenedy data to deter-

mine the numbers for the dioceses of only those bishops who are part of the

USCCB. CARA’s figures reflect more accurately the data on what most people

would think of as the U.S. Catholic Church. For CARA, phone 202-687-8080

or visit the Web site at

If you need a tool like the Kenedy Directory only for the diocese or two

in the area served by your publication, most dioceses publish their own dioc-