Chiapas, Diocese of

CHIAPAS, Diocese of. - In the Republic of Mexico, a suffragan of Antequera. It comprises the entire State of Chiapas, with an area of 73,000 sq km and a population of 630,000 inhabitants (half Indians and half whites or mestizos), of whom 615,000 are Catholics. The diocese is divided into 40 parishes; it has 182 churches with 27 diocesan priests and a few regulars. This scarcity of clergy is due mainly to the religious persecution of past years, once which had subsided the seminary was reopened after a long period of dispersal. The territory that currently forms the diocese of Chiapas belonged from 1526 to 1536 to the first diocese that nominally existed in Mexico, called Carolense; it then passed to the diocese of Guatemala, but as early as 19 March 1539, Paul III (Inter multiplices) erected it as an independent diocese. From its foundation, Chiapas became an important center of evangelization, thanks to its second bishop, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a strenuous defender of the Indians against the greed of the conquerors, for which he earned the glorious appellation of "padre de los indios."

The first missionaries were Dominicans and contributed greatly to raising the moral and civil level of the Indians, whom they gathered into villages, or reductions, catechized them and taught them trades and professions, which they still practice today. The episcopal see is at San Cristobal las Casas, formerly Ciudad Real, founded by Diego Mazariegos (1528), which possesses a beautiful cathedral and 19 other churches.

Francesco Aguilera