ALBA REALE, DIOCESE OF. — In Hungarian Szekesfehérvár, in German Stuhlweissenburg. The city was the residence of the kings of Hungary for 300 years (whence its name) and the place of royal burial until 1543. STEPHEN IV built a basilica there and founded a collegiate chapter entrusted with guarding the Holy Crown. On 16 June 1777, MARIA THERESA established the bishopric there, a suffragan of Strigonia. The grand cathedral of ST. STEPHEN was completed in 1786. Alba Reale remained, from 1543 to 1681, under the Turkish yoke, which destroyed the Royal Basilica in 1601.
The best-known bishop, even outside Hungary, is Ottokar Prohászka, a great sacred and secular orator, an excellent writer, and an untiring promoter of agrarian reform. He died in Budapest, in the pulpit, on 2 April 1927. Above his tomb in Alba Reale, grateful Hungary erected a church in his memory. The diocese has 390,000 Catholics out of 508,063 inhabitants; 127 parishes, 242 diocesan priests, and 56 regular clergy.