BANJALUKA, DIOCESE OF. - A city in Bosnia (22,177 inhabitants), the capital of the Banat of Urbas (area 20,436 sq. km., population approx. 1,008,000) and seat of the Catholic diocese. Situated in the very centre of the Croatian regions, the diocese covers an area of 16,520 sq. km. where 134,335 Catholics live among a majority of dissidents and Muslims. It comprises 6 deaneries and 48 parishes, 36 churches and 120 chapels, 72 Yugoslav priests and 22 foreign priests. The religious (the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul from Zagreb and the Adorers of the Precious Blood, with their principal house at Nazareth near B.) had, in 1939, 16 convents and 206 sisters (schools and hospitals). In Roman times, the regions south of B. belonged to the province of Dalmatia and the metropolitan see of Salona (the dioceses of Baloc near Varcar-Vakuf, of Sarnada near Kljuc, etc.), while those to the north belonged to 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 first the diocese of Nona (Nin) until its suppression in 928, and later other dioceses, especially those of Zagreb and Knin, whose bishop originally bore 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 onwards, and especially after the fall of the Croatian cities of Jajce (1528) and Bihać (1592), the population, once exclusively Croatian and Catholic, was partly exterminated, deported, or forced to emigrate or embrace schism and Islam. Moreover, new masses of other faiths, led by the Turks from the south-east, poured in to serve as colonisers and frontier fighters. Of more than a hundred convents and churches, not one survived the Turkish invasion. During the Turkish era, the Bosnian Franciscans cared for the remaining Catholic population, which then belonged to the Apostolic Vicariate of Ottoman Bosnia.
The present diocese was established by the bull Ex hac augusta of Leo XIII on 5 Aug. 1881, as a suffragan see of the archdiocese of Vrbbosna in Bosnia. The first ordinary was Josip Garic, appointed only in 1912, while previously it was administered by the metropolitan of Vrbbosna, Josip Stadler, and the titular bishop of Danape, Marijan Marković, who built the cathedral of St Bonaventure and the episcopal residence. During the war of 1939–45, as a result of the struggles of the partisans, the diocese suffered very severe damage: churches were destroyed and part of the population and clergy was dispersed.
In the diocese of B. are the famous abbeys of Marija Zviezda (Maria Stella) of the Trappists (3 km. from B.) and the Franciscan convents of Lajce and Livno.