Batavia [Jakarta], Apostolic Vicariate of

BATAVIA [JAKARTA], APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF. - This mission of the Dutch East Indies, governed today by the Dutch Jesuits, was created as a separate circumscription in 1841 (for the earlier period v. INDIE ORIENTALI OLANDESI). From then until 1859 the missionary work of the few secular priests assigned to that very mission was necessarily limited to the assistance of the European Catholics of Java.

In 1859, summoned there by the apostolic vicar Msgr. Vrancken, the first two Dutch Jesuits landed there. These, together with the confreres who followed very soon after, succeeded, at a later stage, in extending their activity beyond Java, to the other parts of the Archipelago (Flores, Timor, Celebes, Sumatra, Borneo, etc.), even before they could create a center in Java itself, where the government protected the dominant Islam all too brazenly. The task, however, was too difficult, not only because of the extent of the vicariate, but because of the multiplicity of races, with the corresponding diversity of language and customs. Therefore, from 1902 the mission began to be split in two and continued to subdivide its territory with other missionary institutes — that of the Sacred Heart of Issoudun, of the Capuchins, of the Fathers of the Divine Word, etc. In this way the Jesuits, confined to the western extremity of Java, were able to promote, above all by means of primary and secondary schools, a fruitful missionary activity, despite the difficulties of the terrain, the national sensitivity of the Javanese, reluctant to embrace an "Western" religion, the tenacious Mohammedanism, especially hostile on the part of the baḡī, fanatics for having made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the encroaching communism, etc.

According to the statistics of 1948 the vicariate has an area of 6,777 sq. km. and a population of 2,648,42 inhabitants, of whom the majority is Muslim. The decrease in inhabitants was determined by a strong current of emigration. The indigenous Catholics number 888 and the foreign Catholics 24,096. The missionaries number 65, the brothers 43, the sisters 247. Five periodicals are published there. In the last Indonesian insurrection for independence (1945-46), after the collapse of Japan, several Jesuit fathers met their death.

Giovanni B. Tragella