BOSA, Diocese of. - City of western Sardinia, in the province of Nuoro, in the lower valley of the Temo river, 5 km. from the sea.
It is a suffragan of the metropolis of Sassari. It embraces a territory of 741.45 sq. km., bounded to the north and east by the diocese of Alghero, to the south by the archdiocese of Oristano, to the west by the sea, with a total population of 35,524 inhabitants, all Catholics. It has 21 parishes, with 46 diocesan priests and 22 regulars.
B., mentioned imprecisely by Ptolemy, had Carthaginian origins. Later it was a Roman municipium with its own magistrates. Christianity and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, introduced in Sardinia from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, have left no traces as regards B. The latter probably already had its bishop from the time of St. Gregory the Great; but the first historically known one is Peter I (1112).
The diocese had distinguished prelates, such as Giovanni di Casanova (1424), numbered among the cardinals by Martin V; Niccolò Canelles (d. 1585), who introduced the art of printing into Sardinia; Giov. Franc. Fara (d. 1592), the father of Sardinian history; Giov. Ant. Còssu (d. 1796), who erected the diocesan seminary. B. hosted several religious Orders: the Benedictines at Tharricelli or Ferrucesi (12th century); the Camaldolese at S. Pietro di Scano Montiferro (1112); the Cistercians at S. Maria di Capo d'Acque near Sindia (1145); the Hospitallers at S. Leonardo near Santo Lussurgiu (whose historical record goes back to 1355); the Observant Friars Minor at S. Maria di Santo Lussurgiu (1470); the Servites at Cuglieri (1540); the Carmelites at B. (1608) and at Cuglieri (1610); the Jesuits at B. (1681); the Piarists founded the Carta-Meloni boarding school at Santo Lussurgiu in 1843; the Salesians succeeded them there in 1922.
Among the monuments, mention should be made of the beautiful cathedral, the ancient S. Leonardo, a national monument, the basilica of Cuglieri rich in marbles; notable are the churches of S. Pietro and S. Antonio extra muros, both Romanesque, with façades of the 14th century. At Cuglieri Pius XI began in 1927 the grand Pontifical Sardinian seminary with a theological faculty, endowed with a copious library; it is entrusted to the Jesuit fathers.