BLUEFIELDS, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF — It was erected on 2 December 1913, when it was made autonomous from the diocese of León in Nicaragua; it is a suffragan of Managua and is directed by the Capuchins.
The territory’s surface area, which includes the department of Zelaya, formerly B., the comarca of Cabo Gracias a Dios, and the Atlantic islands belonging to Nicaragua, including the Corn Islands, formerly of the *missio sui iuris* of St Andrew and Providence, amounts to 70,300 sq km. Total population (approximate census of 1941): 41,654 (Mosquitoes, Negroes of African or Antillean origin, mestizos, mulattos), among whom 20,963 Catholics (mostly Mosquitoes), 15,960 Protestants, 38 Muslims, a few Jews, and 386 pagans. The 18 Capuchin priests (from the regular province of Barcelona and the regular province of Monte Calvario, Detroit, U.S.A., to which the vicariate has been entrusted since 1942) attend to 9 quasi-parishes (with 20 secondary stations), assisted by 8 Brothers of the Christian Schools and 15 Sisters of the Mother of the Divine Shepherd of Barcelona, 104 catechists, 29 teachers for one elementary school (89 pupils) and two secondary schools (186 pupils), and a hospital (95 beds). The *Boletín Dominical* is published there (2,500 copies).
Before the arrival of the Capuchins, Catholics had been spiritually abandoned for lack of diocesan clergy, while Protestant proselytism was gaining ground, especially (from 1849) through the work of the Moravian Brethren. Among the Mosquitoes, systematic evangelization is intensifying, while elsewhere the mission has revived public and private morality, with an increase in legitimate marriages, and has reached even the most remote regions, despite the extreme dangers of travel and the harshness of the tropical climate. The missionaries also profitably direct the primary government school of B. and the local university-level institute.