The Keeping of the Record
It claims no authority; it renders an account.
How the record of the dioceses, parishes, and cathedrals kept here is gathered, verified, and corrected.
The sources
This record is kept from the public statements of the dioceses and parishes themselves (their own sites, bulletins, and directories) and from the published references of the Holy See, among them the Annuario Pontificio (Libreria Editrice Vaticana). Nothing in it is privileged, private, or scraped from places it was not offered; it is the visible Church, seen.
It is a work of the lay faithful. It is not an official publication of the Holy See, of any episcopal conference, or of any diocese, and it binds no one. Where it differs from a diocese’s own statements, the diocese is right.
The blank kept honest
The rule of this record is that a blank is honest and a guess is not. Where a Mass time, a website, a bishop’s name cannot be established with confidence, the field is left empty rather than filled with a plausible invention. Where a claim is marked verified, the mark rests on a receipt: a source document from the church’s own published statements, checked recently, kept with the record. Where a source has died, and the record has found parish domains lapsed into the hands of strangers, the dead link is retired rather than repeated.
Scale is stated as over a floor, never as a false-precise count, because the visible Church moves faster than any record of her: parishes merge, sees fall vacant, schedules change with the seasons.
Correction in charity
The record is corrected without complaint wherever it is found wanting. Pastors, diocesan staff, and any of the faithful who find an error are asked to write: [email protected]. A correction from a parish about itself outranks every other source this record has.
Portions of the record are prepared for study in the archive; the open interfaces for search are documented for those who build.