COCHIN (COCCHINO), DIOCESE OF. - A city on the eastern coast of India in the Malabar region and the seat of a suffragan diocese of the patriarchal see of Goa. Its territory comprises two strips of land measuring 80 and 48 km in length respectively. In 1948, out of a total population of approximately 400,000, Catholics numbered 171,480 under the care of 91 priests, mostly indigenous, and 14 religious, with 50 parishes; in addition, there was a minor seminary, 88 schools with approximately 10,000 pupils, 7 vocational schools, and 4 colleges. Thanks to Portugal, which introduced Catholic missionary work into India, Cochin became the cradle of Catholicism in that country. Indeed, in 1500, five of the eight Franciscan missionaries who, under the leadership of Fr. Henrique de Coimbra, landed at Calicut with Álvaro Cabral, established their headquarters at Cochin and made it a center of operations. From there they set out to work for the conversion of neighboring peoples, especially the Nestorians. As early as 1502, these Nestorians ceded their ancient royal scepter to the King of Portugal, invoking his protection against the Moors. Their bishop promised obedience to the Pope through the Franciscans and two Nestorian priests sent to Rome.
In 1540, the Franciscans founded the first college at Cranganore with the aim of reconverting the Nestorians to the Catholic faith. The majority of the Nestorians had converted to Catholicism before the 17th century. The Jesuits, who entered India under the leadership of St. Francis Xavier in 1542, likewise settled in Cochin in 1550, where they built a college (1560) and later a novitiate (1562), founding their Malabar province in 1601. They were followed by the Dominicans (1553), the Augustinians, and the Capuchins.
Thus the city became the stronghold of Catholicism, from which missionaries, under Portuguese direction, set out to evangelize southern India and Ceylon. When Pius IV elevated Goa to metropolitan status on 4 February 1558, he also erected the diocese of Cochin, granting its patronage to the King of Portugal. At that time, the diocese covered a vast territory, later subdivided into more than 11 bishoprics. In 1663, the Dutch seized Cochin and, after expelling the clergy, destroyed the principal religious buildings, converting the church of St. Francis of Assisi into a Protestant temple and the cathedral of the Holy Cross into a warehouse. When the English drove out the Dutch in 1795, they preserved the first building for Protestant worship but destroyed the second in 1806. Nevertheless, on 1 September 1886, Leo XIII, by virtue of a concordat with Luís, King of Portugal (23 June 1886), restored the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Portuguese Indies and assigned Cochin its present boundaries.