Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany
diocese of the Catholic Church in the United States
The Diocese of Albany (Latin: Diœcesis Albanensis) is a diocese of the Catholic Church in eastern New York in the United States. Its mother church is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of New York.
Territory
The Diocese of Albany covers the following counties: Albany, Columbia, Delaware, Fulton, Greene, southern Herkimer, Montgomery, Otsego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Warren, and Washington.
History
1600 to 1800
During the Dutch rule of present-day New York State in the 17th century, Catholics were allowed in the colony of New Amsterdam. However, only Dutch Reformed Churches were permitted to operate.In the Albany region, the first Catholic presence was that of French missionaries in the 1640s attempting to evangelize the Mohawk peoples of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederation). Three missionaries were killed by the Mohawks, one near present-day Auriesville in 1642 and two at Lake George in 1646. They were later declared martyrs of the Catholic Church.
Great Britain took over New Amsterdam in 1664.During the next century, colonial governors of the Province of New York imposed bans on Catholic churches and restricted Catholics from holding public offices.Richard Coote, the first colonial governor, passed a law at the end of the 17th century that mandated a life sentence to any Catholic priest. The penalty for harboring a Catholic was a £250 fine plus three days in the pillory.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany” is diocese of the Catholic Church in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roman, Catholic and Diocese, not as a finished interpretation.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q866789. Authority coordinates are 42.652, -73.754. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1600, 1800, 1642 and 1646.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.