Banja Luka, Diocese of

BANJA LUKA, Diocese of. - City of Bosnia (22,177 inhabitants), capital of the banate of Urbas (area 20,436 sq. km., population about 1,008,000) and seat of the Catholic diocese. Situated right in the center of the Croatian regions, the diocese has an area of 16,520 sq. km. where 134,335 Catholics live, outnumbered by a majority made up of dissidents and Muslims. It has 6 deaneries and 48 parishes, 36 churches and 120 chapels, 72 Yugoslav priests and 22 foreign ones. The religious women (Pious Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul of Zagreb and Adorers of the Most Precious Blood with their main house at Nazareth near B.) had, in 1939, 16 convents and 206 sisters (schools and hospitals).

In the times of Roman domination, the regions south of B. depended on the province of Dalmatia and the metropolis of Salona (the dioceses of Baloe near Varcar-Vakuf, of Sarnada near Kljuc, etc.), and the northern ones on the dioceses of the province of Pannonia (Siscia, Cibale, etc.).

In the ancient Croatian State from the 9th to the 12th century, to which the entire territory of the diocese of B. belonged, there was at first the diocese of Nona (Nin) until its abolition in 928, and later also other dioceses, especially those of Zagreb and Knin, whose bishop originally held the title of Episcopus Croatorum or that of Episcopus croatensis, and finally the archdiocese of Spalato. In the bloody struggles against the Turks from the 15th century onward, and especially after the fall of the Croatian cities of Jajce (1528) and Bihać (1592), the population, once exclusively Croatian and Catholic, was in part exterminated, having been deported or forced to emigrate or to embrace schism and Islam. Moreover, new masses of another faith burst in from the southeast, led by the Turks, to serve there as colonizers and guerrillas on the Croatian frontier. Of more than a hundred convents and churches, not even one survived the Turkish invasion. During the Turkish era the Bosnian Franciscans took care of the remaining Catholic population, which then belonged to the apostolic vicariate of Ottoman Bosnia.

The present diocese was founded with the bull Ex hac augusta of Leo XIII on 5 August 1881, as a diocese suffragan of the archdiocese of Vrhbosna in Bosnia. Its first prelate was Josip Garić, appointed only in 1912, while before that it was administered by the metropolitan of Vrhbosna Josip Stadler and by the titular bishop of Danape Marijan Marković, who had the cathedral of St. Bonaventure and the bishop's residence built. During the war of 1939-45, following the struggles of the partisans, the diocese suffered very grave damage: churches were destroyed and a part of the population and of the priests was dispersed.

In the diocese of B. are found the famous abbeys of Marija Zvezda (Maria Stella) of the Trappists (5 km. from B.) and the Franciscan convents of Lajce and Livno.

Stefano Draganović