“So I went ahead and added Canada and Mexico and Central America,” he said.
The next addition, Cheney explained, came from Lima, Peru. Someone at ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner founded in 1980, “was kind enough to give me basically an Excel spreadsheet that had all the current bishops of South America.”
At that point, “Why not go all the way?” he thought.
“It always left holes If I didn’t include everything so I just went ahead and expanded it to the world.”
On May 10, 2002, the Catholic-Hierarchy.org web domain was born.
How it works
Cheney said he reads the news bulletin from the Vatican every day to know what new bishops the pope has nominated, or to get information about bishop retirements or transfers.
He then inputs any new data into the website. Other information, such as bishops’ ages, updates automatically.
Besides the Vatican bulletin, Cheney has gotten a lot of historical information on bishops from his collection of the Annuario Pontificio, or pontifical directory. He has acquired copies from the years 1914 to 2022, though he is missing a handful, he said.
Historical researchers also share information with the webmaster. And he has shared his database with other researchers. Google Books has also been a useful resource, he said.
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Cheney described how the website works, acknowledging that it uses an “extremely old and out of date” management system, Paradox.
“It’s what is called a truly relational database,” he said, “and basically what that means is there’s no need to duplicate information … between the tables. All you do is link them.”
The tables are like spreadsheets, he explained. “There’s one main bishop table, and basically there’s an entry for every person I’ve got on the site.”
There are also related tables for events, such as a bishop’s birth and death, when he was appointed a bishop, who consecrated him, and more.
“So those are all separate tables, and then using the database you can access all those at once, basically interrelate them,” Cheney said.
Through a minimal amount of advertising, the website generates a small revenue, which he said he uses to cover the hosting service, domain name, and other basic costs of the website. “The goal has never been to make money,” he said.
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