COCCINO (COCHIN), DIOCESE of. — City of eastern India on the Malabar coast and seat of a suffragan diocese of the patriarchal see of Goa. Its territory comprises two strips of land, respectively 80 and 48 km long. In 1948, out of a total population of approximately 400,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 171,480, under the direction of 91 priests, mostly indigenous, and 14 religious, with 50 parishes; there were also a minor seminary, 88 schools with approximately 10,000 children, 7 vocational schools, and 4 colleges. Thanks to Portugal, which introduced the Catholic missionary enterprise into the Indies, C. became the cradle of Catholicism in that country. Indeed, in 1500, five of the eight Franciscan missionaries who, under the direction of Fr. Enrico di Coimbra, landed at Calicut with Alvarez Cabral established their headquarters at C. and made it a center of coordination. From there they set out to work for the conversion of the neighboring peoples, especially the Nestorians. As early as 1502, the latter surrendered the scepter of their ancient kings to the king of Portugal, invoking his protection against the Muslims. 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 Cranganor, with the aim of bringing the Nestorians back to the Catholic faith. The majority of the Nestorians had converted to Catholicism before the seventeenth century. The Jesuits, who entered the Indies under the leadership of the great St. Francesco Saverio in 1542, likewise settled at C. in 1550, built a college there (1560), and then also a novitiate (1562), later founding their province of Malabar there (1601). The Dominicans (1553), the Augustinians, and the Capuchins also came in their turn.
Thus the city became the stronghold of Catholicism, from which missionaries departed, under Portuguese direction, for the evangelization of southern India and Ceylon. When Pius IV raised Goa to the rank of a metropolis, on 4 February 1558, he also erected the diocese of C., granting its patronage to the king of Portugal. At that time the diocese encompassed a vast territory, later divided into more than 11 bishoprics. In 1663 the Dutch seized C. and, after expelling the clergy, destroyed the principal religious buildings, transforming the church of S. Francesco d’Assisi into a Protestant temple and the cathedral of S. Cruz into a warehouse. When the English drove out the Dutch in 1795, they retained the former monument for Protestant worship and destroyed the latter in 1806. Nevertheless, on 1 September 1886, Leo XIII, by virtue of a concordat with Luigi, king of Portugal (23 June 1886), restored the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Portuguese India and assigned C. its present boundaries.