BOGOTÁ, Archdiocese of. - In the republic of Colombia, department of Cundinamarca. The primatial see and capital of the State, B. is situated at 2,640 m. on the edge of a vast high plateau ringed by lofty mountains. It has about 325,000 inhabitants. An episcopal see in 1562, it was then erected as a metropolis by Pius IV on 24 March 1564, under the name of Santa Fé de B.; until the beginning of the present century the ecclesiastical province of B. comprised the entire territory of the present republic plus Panama. Now, after the erection of other metropolitan sees, it comprises the central-north-eastern part of the republic, with 4 suffragans: Ibagué, Nueva Pamplona, Socorro, Tunja. The archdiocese has an area of 22,350 sq. km. with 1,340,000 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, divided into 147 parishes. The number of secular priests is 192, of regulars 358. It has a major seminary and two minor ones.
The progress of studies kept pace with that of ecclesiastical organization. First the Dominicans, in their convent of the Rosary erected in 1550, established the University of St. Thomas with all the canonical faculties, which received solemn confirmation from Gregory XIII in 1580. The Jesuits in turn, having settled in the country, founded the college of St. Bartholomew in 1604, to which in 1605 the Conciliar seminary, then founded, was also annexed; in 1621 Gregory XV erected there the Universidad Javeriana, which lasted there until 1767. Owing to political upheavals and the consequent suppressions, the two institutions were subject to various vicissitudes; until the Jesuits, having resumed the college of St. Bartholomew in 1928, restored there in 1931 the Universidad Javeriana, recognized by the government in 1933; in 1937 it was erected as a Catholic and pontifical university. Since 1933 it has published the Revista Javeriana.
Among the religious monuments, special mention is due to the Cathedral, one of the most beautiful churches in Latin America; the churches of St. Francis, St. Ignatius, St. Augustine, La Tercera, El Sagrario, La Candelaria and St. Dominic.
Bibliography5 works
Pietro Gómez