BOSA, DIOCESI of. — City of western Sardinia, in the province of Nuoro, in the lower valley of the Temo River, 5 km from the sea.
It is a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Sassari. It covers a territory of 741.45 sq km, bounded to the north and east by the diocese of Alghero, to the south by the archdiocese of Oristano, and to the west by the sea, with a total population of 35,524 inhabitants, all Catholic. It has 21 parishes, with 46 diocesan priests and 22 religious priests.
B., mentioned imprecisely by Ptolemy, had Carthaginian origins. Later it became a Roman municipium with its own magistrates. Christianity and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, introduced in Sardinia from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, have left no traces with regard to B. It probably already had its own bishop in the time of s. Gregorio Magno; but the first historically known one is Pietro I (1112).
The diocese had distinguished prelates, such as Giovanni di Casanova (1424), numbered among the cardinals by Martino V; Niccolò Canelles (d. 1585), who introduced the art of printing into Sardinia; Giov. Franc. Fara (d. 1592), the father of Sardinian history; and Giov. Ant. Còssu (d. 1796), who established the diocesan seminary. B. hosted several religious Orders: the Benedictines at Tharricelli or Ferrucesi (12th century); the Camaldolese at S. Pietro di Scano Montiferro (1112); the Cistercians at S. Maria di Capo d'Acque near Sindia (1145); the Hospitallers at S. Leonardo near Santo Lussurgiu (whose historical record dates back to 1355); the Friars Minor Observants at S. Maria di Santo Lussurgiu (1470); the Servites at Cuglieri (1540); the Carmelites at B. (1608) and at Cuglieri (1610); the Jesuits at B. (1681); the Piarists founded the Carta-Meloni boarding school at Santo Lussurgiu in 1843; they were succeeded there by the Salesians in 1922.
Among the monuments, the beautiful cathedral, the ancient S. Leonardo, a national monument, and the basilica of Cuglieri, rich in marble, deserve mention; noteworthy are the churches of S. Pietro and S. Antonio extra muros, both Romanesque, with 14th-century façades. At Cuglieri, Pio XI began in 1927 the imposing Pontifical Sardinian seminary with a faculty of theology, furnished with a substantial library; it is entrusted to the Jesuit fathers.