On 22 July 1961, Pope John XXIII promulgated the bull "Peramplum novae aureliae" erecting the Diocese of Baton Rouge, taking its territory from the Archdiocese of New Orleans and making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan archdiocese. The pope designated St. Joseph Church in the see city, built in 1853-1855 and renovated many times since, as the cathedral church of the new diocese. A census conducted in the very first year of the diocese's operation revealed its membership to be 164,476 Catholics out of the total of 464,904 people reported by the U. S. Census Bureau in the federal census conducted in prior year.