AUCKLAND, DIOCESE OF. — In New Zealand, a suffragan diocese of Wellington, erected and entrusted to the secular clergy in 1848 with the division of the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Oceania.
The Diocese of Auckland comprises the civil province of the same name and the group of the Kermadec Islands, covering an area of 76,800 sq. km. and a population of 500,000 whites (1936 census), of whom 217,300 are concentrated in the capital, and about 40,000 aboriginal Maoris. Eighty-six percent of the population is Protestant (Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Methodists); Catholics, according to the statistics of the Australasian Catholic Directory (1948), number 68,700, including 6,700 Maoris. The diocese has 73 parishes with 167 churches, 255 priests of whom 39 are religious, 65 brothers, and 531 sisters belonging to various religious congregations. The pupils educated in diocesan Catholic schools number 10,324.
