20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States 20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States The 20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States was characterized by a period of continuous growth for the Church in the United States, with Catholics progressively evolving from a small minority to a large minority. In 1900 the Catholic population was 10 million, under the control of 14 Archbishops, 77 bishops, and 12,000 priests . The community had built 10,000 churches, of which two-thirds had resident pastors. Catholic schools educated nearly 1,000,000 children and youth. Catholics were heavily concentrated in the industrial and mining centers of the
History of the East–West Schism led up to the Great Schism between the western and eastern churches, expressed as the Catholic-Orthodox Joint declaration of 1965. At the same time, they lifted the mutual excommunications dating from the 11th century. On June 29, 1995, Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople again withdrew the excommunications imposed in the 11th century and concelebrated the Eucharist together. In May 1999, John Paul II was the first pope since the Great Schism to visit an Eastern Orthodox country: Romania. Upon greeting John Paul II, the Romanian Patriarch Teoctist stated: "The second millennium of Christian history began