**BELGRADE (BEOGRAD), ARCHDIOCESE OF.** — In Yugoslavia. It covers an area of 48,550 sq. km and has 60,410 faithful (of whom over 40,000 in Belgrade itself), who live among 3,260,000 dissenters, almost all of them Serbs. In 1938 it comprised 2 deaneries, 15 parishes and 1 chapel, and had 25 secular priests and 14 regular priests (Jesuits, Franciscans, Lazarists, Marists, Assumptionists). As the diocese has only recently been reconstituted, its various Catholic institutions are still in the process of formation.
On the site of present-day Belgrade there existed in the 4th century the Roman municipality of *Singidunum*, with a bishopric seat held from 335 to 370 by the Arian bishop Ursacius. At the time of the Council of Sardica (343-44), the sees of Naissus (Niš), Horreum Margi (Kruševac) and Viminacium (Kostolac) were located within the territory of the present diocese, but they disappeared with the invasions of the Avars and Slavs. On the ruins of *Singidunum* (destroyed from the beginning of the 7th century) a new city then arose, which under various dominations (Byzantine, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Serbian) took the names Alba Graeca, Alba Bulgarica, Nandorlba and Belgrade. The Serbs first came into possession of Belgrade in 1316-19, and it then became the capital of the “Serbian despotate” in 1403; but by 1427 it had passed into Hungarian hands as a key fortress at the entrance to the middle Danube region. In 1456 the victory in which St. John of Capistrano took part occurred. At that time a Latin-rite Catholic bishopric was established in Belgrade, which disappeared when Suleiman the Magnificent conquered the city in 1521, turning the cathedral into a mosque. The diocese was then administered by various bishops as apostolic visitors, some of whom resided there, such as the Archbishop of Bar (Antivari), Piero Massarechi (1624-32), who resided there permanently. From 1647 to 1720 the bishops of this diocese, including Fr. Matteo Belic (1651-74), bore the title of Bishop of Belgrade, to which from 1720 to 1739 was added that of Smederevo (*Belgradensis-Semendiviensis*), and they were subject to the metropolitans of Antivari and Skopje (Üsküb). In 1717 Eugene of Savoy reconquered Belgrade. Under Hungarian rule, however, they acknowledged the authority of the Archbishop of Kalocsa. The population was predominantly dissenting; Catholics were generally only Bosnian-Ragusan, German or Hungarian immigrants. Under Austrian rule (1711-39) Catholicism enjoyed a brief period of revival, with 12,000 Catholics out of 20,000 inhabitants and 8 churches. When Belgrade again fell under Turkish rule, the Catholics almost completely disappeared, and the diocese was governed by vicars and apostolic administrators, the most notable of whom was the Bishop of Đakovo, J. J. Strossmayer (1851-97). From 1898 it came under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples until 1914. Various ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Habsburg Empire bore the title of Belgrade. Even with Strossmayer’s persistent efforts, he failed to obtain permission from the Serbian government to open at least one Catholic church and school in the city. These conditions changed when Article 2 of the concordat with Serbia (1914) elevated the Diocese of Belgrade to an archiepiscopal see with the suffragan Diocese of Skopje, both exempt from the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The boundaries of the two dioceses corresponded until 1912 to those of the Serbian kingdom. The archiepiscopal see, however, remained vacant until 1924. With the formation of the Yugoslav state, Belgrade became the capital; the number of Catholics increased from a few thousand to 60,400, though it has since declined significantly after 1941.
Stefano Draganović