Paul VI erected the Archdiocese of Anchorage. The new archdiocese took the territory "lying west of Mount Saint Elias and Icy Bay" from the Diocese of Juneau. The pope designated the Church of the Holy Family in Anchorage as its cathedral church. The erection of the Archdiocese of Anchorage reduced the Diocese of Juneau to about twenty parishes and missions, plus the Shrine of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in the Tongass National Forest. The Diocese of Fairbanks and the Diocese of Juneau were now the suffragan sees of the new archdiocese. Events during the period of separation The Archdiocese of Anchorage hosted several visits from Pope John Paul II. In 1981, he celebrated mass on the Anchorage Park Strip before 50,000 people. As the archdiocese continued to grow, the Cathedral of the Holy Family became too small to host major diocesan services. Archbishop Roger Schwietz petitioned the Holy See in 2013 to designate Our Lady of Guadalupe Church a co-cathedral, keeping Holy Family as the historic cathedral. The Vatican granted its approval in October 2014 and Schwietz elevated the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe to a co-cathedral on its titular feast, December 12, 2014. On October 1, 2016, Bishop Edward J. Burns of Juneau announced that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and its Committee on Divine Worship had designated the Shrine of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as a national shrine. Reunification On May 19, 2020, Pope Francis announced the merger of the Archdiocese of Anchorage and the Diocese of Juneau into the Archdiocese of Anchorage–Juneau, canonically effected by erecting a new metropolitan archdiocese and suppressing both the Diocese of Juneau and the Archdiocese of Anchorage. The Diocese of Fairbanks became the suffragan diocese. The merger took effect at the mass of installation of Andrew E. Bellisario, then bishop of Juneau and apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, as the first archbishop of the new archdiocese on September 17, 2020. The decree of erection incardinated, or transferred, all the clergy of the former Diocese of Juneau and the former Archdiocese of Anchorage into the new archdiocese. This decree also designated the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Anchorage as the primary cathedral and the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary as the co-cathedral. The Church of the Holy Family in Anchorage lost its role as a cathedral when the merger took effect, but