The Catholic hierarchy had been established in the United States only five decades earlier with the appointment of John Carroll as prefect-apostolic and then Bishop of Baltimore, and until 1908, all of the United States was still regarded in the Catholic Church as mission territory under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (or Propaganda). There were no parishes in the strict sense, and in his own writings, Neumann always observed correct technical usage in referring to a portion of a diocese as a "mission," "congregation," or "quasi-parish." However, places where he worked are often described by more recent writers as parishes.