The Bishop of Salford is the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford in the Province of Liverpool, England. With the gradual abolition of the legal restrictions on the activities of Catholics in England and Wales in the early 19th century, Rome decided to proceed to bridge the gap of the centuries from Queen Elizabeth I by instituting Catholic dioceses on the regular historical pattern. On 29 September 1850, Pope Pius IX issued the Bull Universalis Ecclesiae which created thirteen new dioceses which did not formally claim any continuity with the pre-Elizabethan English dioceses of which one of these was the diocese of Salford and went on to take up the reins of part of the former Vicariate Apostolic of the Lancashire District.