The genesis of the Conference was the initial association of Peter LaManna, Gerald Muller, and Richard Proulx in the Spring of 1983 while engaged in the search process for a new Music Director for the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C. This productive collaboration and an awareness of antecedent Roman Catholic music organizations led to a call to seventeen cathedral musicians who subsequently met at the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in November, 1984.