CHILAPA, Diocese of. — In the Republic of Mexico, a suffragan see of Mexico City, erected by Pius IX on 16 March 1863 by the constitution Omnibus notum, carved out of the archdiocese of Puebla. It comprises the entire State of Guerrero, with an area of 73,136 sq. km. and a population of about 700,000 inhabitants, of whom 695,000 are Catholics. The diocese is divided into 79 parishes served by 116 priests and has one seminary (1948).
Within the diocese lies the town of Taxco, the oldest mining centre in Mexico (Real de Minas). Founded in 1529, it still retains the imprint of the colonial period. The parish church, a jewel of Mexican Baroque, is particularly famous; it was built between 1753 and 1760 at the expense of the wealthy mine owner José de la Borda, who spent 1,661,572 pesos on II. It once possessed a monstrance reckoned among the richest in the world, which was later transferred to the cathedral of Mexico City and then sacrilegiously removed by revolutionaries; it can still be admired in Paris, in the treasury of Notre-Dame, which purchased it for a million francs, after the 8,353 precious stones had been stripped from II.