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
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the USSR Stalinist methods being used against supporters of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. The legalization of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church posed a serious threat to the status of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Ukraine. As a result, the Moscow Patriarchate and Volodymyr Scherbytsky's party apparatchiks took decisive measures to prevent legalization. In May–June 1989, the question of the Uniate Church caused a schism amongst the ranks of Soviet politicians, which in turn delayed the legislative passage of the long-awaited "Law on the Freedom of Conscience." Furthermore, the issue of the UGCC also led to the replacement of K. Kharchev by Y.