About

The development of the Global Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions Repository grew from a deceptively simple question: where is the Catholic Church? Before this project, information about Catholic dioceses and other ecclesiastical jurisdictions existed scattered across books, statistical publications, local diocesan maps, historical atlases, and digital resources, but there was no unified, global geographic dataset or even unified analog map of the Church’s geographic presence.

Historical resources such as those in the David Rumsey Map Collection and the Atlas Hierarchicus provided important precedents, but their maps were sub-continental without a standardized global projection used or framework suitable for modern analysis. An important precursor was created by Sasha Trubetskoy, who drew Catholic ecclesiastical provinces (Administrative 1) by hand using GIMP, an open-source image editing tool that is similar to Micrsoft Paint or Photoshop. Although these boundaries were not data-driven, missing substantial information, and had a high margin of error, they shared the basic vision of representing the Church’s geographic organization globally. Sasha later joined GoodLands as a member of the original boundary-dataset team. My subsequent research brought together many sources, the ones used for mapping ultimately documented in the Data Provenance databases on this site, to develop a systematic, true-to-scale geographic representation of the Church’s jurisdictions.

In 2016, I was an invited researcher at Esri’s Applications Prototype Lab in Redlands, California, where I served as project lead for the development of the first version of the global ecclesiastical boundaries data and maps. Developing the initial boundaries required working with and regularly consulting a large team that included Esri’s technical, cartographic, and professional-services experts, as well as external researchers, boundary digitization and governance experts, and Catholic data specialists.

Before beginning the project at Esri, I spent well over a year searching for a comprehensive global ecclesiastical jurisdictional dataset, including working with students at the Yale School of the Environment. In June 2016, I sought confirmation from the Holy See’s Office of the Secretary of State as to whether a comprehensive global geographic dataset, or even a unified analog map of Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdictions, already existed internally or was known to exist elsewhere. Those discussions confirmed that the Holy See did not possess such a unified dataset or even analog map and had no knowledge of one existing. I understood that, because geographic boundaries provide a framework for connecting people, institutions, resources, and places, making the Church’s jurisdictions visible as data could reveal the Church’s global presence in ways that had previously been difficult to see or analyze. Knowing this, I then sought and subsequently received permission from the Holy See to proceed with the research at Esri and develop the dataset of Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions.

The project required extensive research and synthesis. I compared jurisdictional maps, diocesan materials, historical documents, Catholic statistical and hierarchical sources, and other geographically descriptive materials to construct boundaries within a common geographic framework. The resulting maps were first presented at the Second Session of the Vatican Arts and Technology Council at Casina Pio IV in December 2016, providing the first unified visualization of the Church’s territorial organization and presence at a global scale.

The 2016 work became the foundation for subsequent versions of the global ecclesiastical boundary dataset and was incorporated into GoodLands, the organization I founded and led, where I continued to develop, correct, enrich, and use the boundaries in geographic research, mapping, and analytical applications. GoodLands is now being wound down as I transition this work into an academic and ecclesial context. The present Global Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions Repository continues that lineage through the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), where I am a doctoral student researching the geography of the Church and developing a foundational treaties in the field, and the Catholic University of America, where I am the inaugural Ignazio Danti, O.P. Fellow in Geography at the Leonum Institute of AI and Emerging Technologies.

My work now places greater emphasis on codifying the research developed through these earlier projects, including ontology and knowledge representation, governance, versioning, temporal information integration, and peer-reviewed verification processes. The purpose is not simply to produce a map, but to maintain a documented geographic infrastructure through which the Catholic Church’s territorial organization, people, institutions, and changing global presence can be reliably represented, studied, and used in support of research, missions, and ministries.

The development of this work has been informed by sustained engagement with international geographic and Catholic communities. I have participated in United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) sessions and discussions with United Nations and head geographers and relevant national government officials from various countries concerning geospatial data, governance, and the representation of territories and religious communities. I have also participated as the sole representative of a religious organization in certain UN statistical and geospatial sessions. The work has further been shaped by years of consultation with Catholic communities, dioceses, religious orders, and other ecclesial organizations across different regions, helping me identify local geographic realities and improve the accuracy and usefulness of the data.

Beginning in 2017, I participated in discussions exploring the establishment of a dedicated institutional home within the Holy See for this geographic work. An initial proposal received support at the level of the Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, followed by Pope Francis’ approval in 2018 of an arrangement under the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Implementation, including the necessary institutional and budgetary framework, did not proceed at that time. In 2024, the work received further support in principle for development as a sister institute associated with the Vatican Observatory though this was largely tacit from several upper level curial members. The institutional framework remains under consideration and its future uncertain, and the project is presently maintained through its academic context with the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Pontifical University, Catholic University of America.