Breda, Diocese of (BREDA, DIOCESI DI) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 54

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BREDA, DIOCESE of. — In the Netherlands, a suffragan diocese 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 B. was erected into a diocese. The diocesan seminaries are at Ginneken (the minor seminary) and Hoeven (the major seminary). The diocese has 124 parishes with approximately 400,000 inhabitants, of whom 322,000 are Catholics; there are 430 secular priests and 325 regular priests (1948).

BIBL.: De Katholieke Encyclopaedie, VI, pp. 181-82; XVII, p. 127; P. Polman, s. V. in DHG, X, cols. 484-61.

Cesario van Hulst