Chelyabinsk roman catholic parish in the early 20-th century: population, territory, parameters of church life

The article is the first comprehensive study of the quantitative indicators that characterize the development of the Catholic parish in Chelyabinsk in the early 20th century. The article reveals the geographic expansion of Catholicism, the number of Catholics, and the intensity of their Church life on the basis of parish registers and other sources. The process of the Catholic Church formation in its dynamics is clearly presented by descriptive statistics. The study reveals that the Chelyabinsk Catholic parish included the cities Chelyabinsk, Troitsk and Kustanay, together with numerous villages in the same name districts. Catholics lived in Chudinovo, Kocherdyk, Andreevka, Zamanilovka and Sukhoborka volosts of Chelyabinsk Uyezd, in Yegoryevka and Klyuchevka volosts of Troitsky Uyezd, and in Alyoshinka and Sheminovka volosts of Kustanaysky Uyezd of Turgay region. By 1911, more than five thousand adult men and women were in the Chelyabinsk Catholic parish, and in the first decade of the twentieth century, its population increased almost three times. The analysis of church ceremonies statistics found that the main upsurge in the number of parishioners was in 1908-1909. In the early 1910s there was a tendency to reduce the number of religious people and balance the religious congregation. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 20-th century, Catholicism became the second largest Christian confession in the South Ural region. In terms of the intensity of Church life, Catholicism could be then compared to the traditional Old Believers Schism in the region.