KALOCSA (Hung. kalocsa), ARCHDIOCESE OF. A city in Hungary, in the Pest district, seat of the archdiocese of Kalocsa-Bács. The city was founded by St Stephen in the year 1000, and in the same year Silvester II erected the diocese, which was raised to metropolitan status in 1135 by Innocent II. In 1242 the entire region and the city were devastated by the Tartars, but King Béla IV rebuilt it a few years later. In 1581 a national synod of great importance in the history of Hungary was held there; the bishops assembled persuaded King Charles Robert of Anjou (1307–42) to return to constitutional government and to repeal laws hostile to the Church.
After the disastrous battle of Mohács (1526), Kalocsa fell under Turkish rule and the city itself was completely destroyed in 1690. It rose again after the reconquest by Christian armies in 1690. Today it is a small cultural and religious centre; of its 12,334 inhabitants, 11,537 are Catholics. It has several religious institutes, higher schools; the library of the Cathedral Chapter contains 85,000 volumes.
Its first bishop was Astrik, a Benedictine abbot, sent by St Stephen to Pope Silvester II to announce Hungary’s conversion to Christianity. In 1093 the diocese of Bács was also united to that of Kalocsa, and with several suffragan dioceses in Croatia, the struggle against the heretics, the Patarenes and Bogomils, had its centre at Kalocsa. (L. Balicus, A rom. cath. Egyhaz tortenete Magyarorazugao [The history of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary], III, Budapest 1888, part 2; A. Hodinka, Egyhazank huzdelmei a boszsziai eretnekséggel [The struggles of our Church against the heresies of Bosnia], Kolocza 1902).
Archbishop Paul Tomori was the leader of the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohács and lost his life there. Until the Romanian concordat (1929), the suffragan dioceses of Kalocsa were Csanád, the Latin-rite part of Nagyvárad (Gran Varadino) and Transylvania (the last two becoming autonomous after the concordat).
The archdiocese covers 13,000 sq km, with 357 diocesan priests and 45 regular clergy; it has 606,000 Catholics out of a total population of 880,000 (1948).