Chilapa, Diocese of

CHILAPA, Diocese of. - In the republic of Mexico, suffragan of Mexico City, erected by Pius IX on 16 March 1863 with the constitution Omnibus notum, detaching it from the archdiocese of Puebla. It embraces 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 with 116 priests and one seminary (1948).

Within the territory of the diocese lies the small town of Taxco, the oldest mining center in Mexico (Real de minas). Founded in 1529, it still preserves the imprint of the colonial era. Very famous is the parish church, a jewel of Mexican Baroque, built between 1753 and 1760 by the wealthy mine owner José de la Borda, who spent 1,661,572 pesos on it. It possessed a monstrance, reckoned among the richest in the world, which passed to the cathedral of Mexico City and was then sacrilegiously carried off by the revolutionaries; it can still be admired in Paris, in the treasury of Notre-Dame, which bought it for a million francs, stripped of its 8,353 precious stones.

Francesco Aguilera