In the heart of the evangelical South is a demographic group that may often get overlooked. In 2000, the number of Georgians that identified as Catholic stood at about 3 percent. By 2012, that number was up to 12 percent, or about 1.2 million.
The influx of Hispanic immigrants has been the greatest contributor, but African and Asian Catholics have also added significant numbers. Georgia is served by two territories, the Archdiocese of Atlanta, led by Archbishop Wilton Gregory, and the Diocese of Savannah, led by Bishop Gregory John Hartmeyer.
The Catholic Church has a strong history in Georgia. During the Siege of Savannah in 1779, French, Haitian and Irish Catholic troops fought the British alongside American soldiers and Fort Pulaski was named after one them, the Polish count Casimir Pulaski. Some French Catholics, fleeing from the French Revolution, settled in Savannah in the 1790s. When Sherman and his army came through Atlanta, it was a Catholic priest named Thomas O’Reilly that convinced Sherman to not burn all of the city’s churches. By the turn of the twentieth century, there were about 18,000 Catholics, with the biggest populations still in Savannah.
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