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Portugal Church Directories
The Catholic church kept all records of birth, marriage, and death in Portugal until 1878, and continued to record these events for members of their church (the majority of the population) until 1911.

All parish records were moved to District and National archives in 1911. Although the majority of these records have been digitized, few have been indexed. Thus, researchers need to know the name of the parish their ancestors attended in order to locate baptism, marriage, and burial records. This can be done through a church directory.

Church directories list all of the parishes in a given area. Once the parish nearest an ancestor's town of origin has been located, the records for that church can be found at the corresponding district archive.

A church directory lists dioceses, parishes, and possibly ministers. They can provide information such as
 * Parish address.
 * Addresses for church officials.
 * Lists of church jurisdictions and headquarters.
 * Chronological lists of principal church officials.
 * Addresses of church schools or other institutions.

Online Church Directories
The Conferência Episcopal Portuguesa provides an online index to each of the 20 Dioceses in Portugal, with links to the every Dioceses in Portugal' website. Once on the Dioceses' website, users can browse through a list of all parishes (Paróquias) in the Dioceses to better understand which parish their ancestor attended.

The Catholic Directory provides a list of all the cities in Portugal that contain a Catholic parish. Once the city is selected, all the parishes within the city are listed with their contact information.

Church Directories at the Family History Library
The Family History Library holds various church directories for Portugal. To find church directories, look in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:

PORTUGAL - CHURCH DIRECTORIES

These directories may contain information on parishes that no longer exist, and thus would not be listed in the online directories.