Catholicism in the California Bay Area: Origin, Beliefs, and My Culture Catholicism is one of the more prominent religions in the world, and the Bay Area region of California. From a historic standpoint, Catholicism in America often is tied to ethnic backgrounds; and therefore is a religion that embodies diversity. While most of the religions of the world have followers of different races, it seems that the diversity of Catholicism is more wide spread. The American city I was born in, San Francisco, CA, has a very rich and vast Catholic community. Initially, the early Catholic communities were comprised of early Irish Americans that settled on the western part of the United States. In the mid to late 1800s several other American immigrant nationalities relocated to western cities like San Francisco, sharing the same Roman Catholic Church beliefs, and practices. From Seattle, WA down to Los Angeles, CA there were several Catholic churches founded by German, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Mexican American communities. The Mexican American community consisted of primarily Mexicans that lived in then Mexican states prior to the Mexican American war in the 1840s.
This westward immigration of Catholic communities was also closely followed by the immigration of Asian Americans, and the growth of African-American Catholic communities. Chinese Americans made up most of the Asian Catholic community, as they worked on the westward expansion of the railroads. When Chinese American Catholics Migrated to the west coast they were not met with the embracement that most would say the Catholic religion embodies today. Steven M. Avella describes these events in his short book Catholicism On The Pacific: Building a Regional Scaffolding writing, “This engagement was not always happy as many Irish Catholics participated in anti-Chinese movements (e.g., the Kearneyites of