Glasgow Archdiocese Is Divided Into Three

By a Staff Reporter Britain's numerically largest diocese, the Archdiocese of Glasgow, which has a population of over halfa-million Catholics, has been elevated to a Metropolitan See as head of a new ecclesiastical province with two new dioceses, Paisley and Motherwell, as its suffragan Sees.
The Most Rev. Donald A. Campbell, Highland born, Gaelic speaking Archbishop of Glasgow, contemporary with Cardinal
Griffin as a student in Rome, is the new Metropolitan. Prior to his consecration to Glasgow, Mgr. Campbell was Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Highland diocese where a great number of the faithful are Gaelic-speaking and contain ing many places where the new ing many places where the new
religion of the Reformation never Founder of
penetrated.
The official intimation of the division of the Archdiocese was given in the Osservatore Romano on Saturday, July 26. It is understood that the names of the new Bishops who will be appointed to these new dioceses in the West of Scotland will be announced shortly.
Only 150 years ago the remnant of Catholicism in post-Reformation Glasgow attended Mass in a oneroomed house in an East End slum, their priest a Highland refugee from his own birthplace. and later from the French Revolution.
To-day there are in the diocese between 500,0011 and 600,000 Catholics, 485 priests, 118 parishes with 171 churches, chapels and stations. Some of these parishes. with populations ranging from 10,000 to 18,000 persons, arc bigger than many dioceses in other countries.
The new dioceses each have, special claims to fame in their own right. Motherwell, situated in the heart of industrial Lanarkshire, is known to thousands who have travelled through it to the famous Carfin Grotto. Nearby Hamilton, seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, is steeped in Catholic history.
Paisley is renowned for its lovely 12th-century Abbey and for its great textile centre.
The proposed division of the Archdiocese has been mooted for a number of years; so insistent was the rumour as far back as 1922, that it was believed by many that the dish sion was imminent. It has been known that the division and the enormous replanning it entails have been occupying the attention of Archbishop Campbell and his advisers for many months.