APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF BELGIAN CONGO, VICARIATE. — This vicariate was erected on 9 February 1938, but the Assumptionists who direct it had been working in that territory since 1929, having been invited by Mgr Grison, Apostolic Vicar of Stanley Falls.
The natives, aided also by the good road network of the area, flocked in large numbers to the mission chapels-schools, including the chiefs and even some sultans. After five years, in 1934, the territory was officially detached from the mother mission of Stanley Falls and constituted as a “mission *sui iuris*”, which, after another four years, was raised to the rank of an Apostolic Vicariate without passing through the intermediate stage of a prefecture. The most prosperous region is the southernmost one, while around B. itself and to the north and north-west progress is slower, both because of the already established organization of some centres (Mambasa) and because of the proliferation of secret sects among the forest negroes, especially that of the leopard-men, who carry out terrible acts of vengeance on behalf of their tribe.
According to the 1948 statistics, it has an area of 40,000 sq. km. with a population of about 375,000 inhabitants, of whom 91,606 are indigenous Catholics, 270 foreigners, 49,901 catechumens, 150 Eastern dissidents, 8,000 Protestants, 1,250 Muslims and 225,000 pagans. There are 10 primary stations and 30 secondary ones with 40 missionaries, of whom one is indigenous, 8 brothers and 16 sisters, and a new indigenous congregation. There are 344 elementary schools with 16,167 pupils; the hospitals have 230 beds and the leper asylums 3 with 413 inmates.
Giovanni B. Tragella