The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	start	location	created	updated	relations
Archdiocese of Philadelphia Philadelphia Archdiocese Diocese of Philadelphia	Private Organization	Organization Religion CatholicChurch Philadelphia Censorship RCHorsch	Roman Catholic see erected in 1808 and made an archdiocese in 1875, whose archbishop Cardinal John Krol led the 1975 condemnation of R.C. Horsch's film Black Mass.	1808-04-08	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	2026-09-23	2026-10-15	type with reverse role start fn head_of Michael Egan (bishop) true bishop 1810-10-28 1 type with reverse role end fn head_of James Frederick Wood true bishop, then archbishop 1883-06-20 1

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is the see of the Catholic Church for southeastern Pennsylvania, seated at Philadelphia. Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Philadelphia by bulls dated April 8, 1808, and it was made an archdiocese on February 12, 1875. Its tenth archbishop, Cardinal John Krol, led the religious leaders who in 1975 condemned R.C. Horsch's film Black Mass (1975 film).¹²

The Diocese

The bulls of 1808 gave the diocese "the entire two States of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and the western and southern part of the State of New Jersey," and an accompanying brief named the Franciscan Michael Egan (bishop), stationed at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, its first bishop. Owing to the political conditions in Europe the briefs did not reach Baltimore until 1810, and in the interval Egan served in Philadelphia as vicar general to Bishop John Carroll (archbishop). He was consecrated at Baltimore on October 28, 1810. His successors contended with the lay trustees of St. Mary's Church in the Hogan schism; after fruitless admonitions the administrator Francis Patrick Kenrick closed St. Mary's and its cemeteries on April 16, 1831, and the trustees surrendered on May 18. Kenrick opened in 1832 what became the diocesan seminary of St. Charles Borromeo.¹

The western part of Pennsylvania was separated as the Diocese of Pittsburgh on August 8, 1843, and the Dioceses of Scranton, Pennsylvania and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on March 3, 1868. At the death of Bishop John Neumann on January 5, 1860, the Catholic population of the diocese, which still included Delaware, was estimated at 200,000, with 157 churches and 147 priests. His successor, James Frederick Wood, born in Philadelphia in 1813 and baptized by a Unitarian minister, had been a bank clerk in Cincinnati before his conversion and "was acknowledged by the financial world as thoroughly acquainted with every phase of the banking" business. Wood became the first archbishop in 1875 and died on June 20, 1883.¹ In 1911 the archdiocese comprised the city and county of Philadelphia and the counties of Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, and Schuylkill, an area of 5,043 square miles with a 1910 population of 2,712,708.¹

Cardinal Krol

John Krol, born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1910, was appointed archbishop of Philadelphia on February 11, 1961, was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI on June 26, 1967, and retired on February 11, 1988. He died at his home in Philadelphia on March 3, 1996.²³

Movie Boycott of 1934

On May 23, 1934, Dennis Dougherty called on the area's 800,000 Catholics to boycott motion picture theaters, and declared it sinful for them to enter one.⁴ Over 300,000 Catholics signed pledges to stay away from the movies, and ticket sales fell about 20 percent.⁴ Dougherty did not release anyone from the pledge, and he never officially ended the boycott.⁴ In June 1934 the Motion Picture Association of America agreed to stronger self-censorship and set up the Production Code Administration, headed by the Catholic layman Joseph Breen.⁴ The Catholic movie-review body that followed, the Legion of Decency, grew in influence during the same years.⁴

Black Mass

In late February 1975 a midnight run of Black Mass, a film of a satanic mass by the Philadelphia filmmaker Ray Hoersch, later R.C. Horsch, was cancelled at the Arcadia Theatre (Philadelphia) "after reported pressure by the Philadelphia Archdiocese," according to Art Carduner of the Bandbox Theater in Germantown, Philadelphia, which screened it instead on March 1.⁵ The Inquirer of February 28, 1975 announced the midnight showing there.⁵ Sixteen Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Jewish leaders of Philadelphia, led by Krol, signed a statement calling the film "a blasphemous attack on the religious rites held in sacred reverence by millions of Christian believers" and urging "believers of every religious conviction to use every moral force to discourage the showing of this film in the Philadelphia area."⁶ The statement was issued on Thursday, February 27, 1975, and the Inquirer reported the next morning that the film had been reported booked at a center-city theater and one in Germantown, that the center-city house said the report "was a mistake," and that the Germantown theater said it was not yet known whether the film would be shown there.⁷ United Methodist Bishop James M. Ault of the Philadelphia Area was named among those opposing it.⁸ Horsch said in an interview recorded in 2013 that the archdiocese had the run cancelled after one screening.⁹

Footnotes

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1. Loughlin, James. "Archdiocese of Philadelphia," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11793b.htm ↩︎

2. "Cardinal Krol laid to rest," United Press International, March 8, 1996. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1996/03/08/Cardinal-Krol-laid-to-rest/8760826261200/ ↩︎

3. Weil, Martin. "Cardinal John Krol Dies; Philadelphia Archbishop," The Washington Post, March 4, 1996. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/03/04/cardinal-john-krol-dies/8d845f35-61a2-4b44-934a-0bdc39ca14df/ ↩︎

4. "Dougherty's Movie Boycott," Catholic Historical Research Center, Philadelphia, February 6, 2019, citing Cardinal Dougherty, "Letter to Priests of the Archdiocese," May 25, 1934 (MC78-.1934.05.25). https://chrc-phila.org/doughertys-movie-boycott/ ↩︎

5. [Society and nightlife column], The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 28, 1975, p. 21. https://www.newspapers.com/image/173366667/ ↩︎

6. "Offensive Material: Leaders Condemn Black Mass Film," Religious News Service, Lake Shore Visitor (Erie), March 7, 1975, p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/image/951794835/ ↩︎

7. "Protest Raised Here On 'Black Mass' Film," The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 28, 1975, p. 11. https://www.newspapers.com/image/173364962/ ↩︎

8. "U.M. bishop joins those against satanist movie," Religious News Service, The United Methodist Reporter (Louisiana edition), March 14, 1975, p. 3. https://archive.org/details/louisianaunitedm1975unit ↩︎

9. West, Ashley. "Unknowing Ray Horsch, Episode 2: Performance," The Rialto Report, Podcast 172, September 20, 2026, audio at 30:51 to 32:04, republishing interviews recorded in 2013. https://www.therialtoreport.com/2026/09/20/ray-horsch-3/ ↩︎