BREDA, DIOCESI DI

BREDA, Diocese of. – In the Netherlands, a suffragan of Utrecht. It occupies the western part of the civil province of North Brabant and the southern part of the civil province of Zeeland. Almost the entire territory of the present diocese belonged in the Middle Ages to the Diocese of Liège, but with the new division of the dioceses of the Netherlands in 1559, it was placed under the Diocese of Antwerp; from 1798 it was administered by two vicars general, and from 1803 by an apostolic vicar until 1853, when Breda was erected as a diocese. The diocesan seminaries are at Ginneken (the minor) and Hoeven (the major). The diocese has 124 parishes with about 400,000 inhabitants, of whom 322,000 are Catholic; there are 430 secular priests and 325 regulars (1948).