parochial and private schools; 29,850 through parochial religious education programs. 2420 high school students are served through diocesan and private schools; 6580 through parochial religious education and youth ministry programs. History The presence of the Catholic Church in the present state of Washington dates to the 1830s, when missionary priests François Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers traveled from Quebec and arrived in what was then known as the Oregon Country. On December 1, 1843, the Holy See established the Vicariate Apostolic of the Oregon Territory and named Blanchet its vicar apostolic. In 1846 Pope Gregory XVI established an ecclesiastical territory in the region, and the apostolic vicariate was split into three dioceses: Diocese of Oregon City with François Blanchet as bishop; Diocese of Vancouver Island, with Demers as bishop, and Diocese of Walla Walla at Walla Walla, Washington, with François Blanchet's brother, Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, as bishop. The Whitman massacre in 1847 and the ensuing Cayuse War increased tensions between Christians and the native population of the Oregon Territory, and as a result by 1850 the Diocese of Walla Walla was abandoned and its merged-in territory administered from Oregon City. On May 31, 1850, Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of Nesqually out of the defunct Walla Walla diocese, with Augustin Blanchet as bishop. In January 1851, Augustin Blanchet dedicated St. James Church near Fort Vancouver as the new diocese's cathedral. A new St. James Cathedral was built in Vancouver, Washington in 1885. In 1903 Bishop Edward O'Dea, realizing that Vancouver was no longer the economic and population center of the region, moved the episcopal see to Seattle and began construction on a new cathedral in 1905. The Holy See changed the name to Diocese of Seattle on September 11, 1907, and the present-day St. James Cathedral was dedicated on December 22, 1907. On December 12, 1913, it lost territory to establish the Diocese of Spokane, now its oldest suffragan. It was elevated on June 23, 1951 as Metropolitan Archdiocese of Seattle and Bishop Thomas Arthur Connolly became the first archbishop. Simultaneously it lost territory to establish the Diocese of Yakima, its second suffragan. In 1983, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), initiated an apostolic visitation to the Archdiocese of Seattle. The visitation was largely prompted by concerns over whether the archdiocese under Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen was adhering to church teachings on