CUIABÀ, ARCHDIOCESE of. — In the center of the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its suffragan dioceses are Corumbá and S. Luigi de Cáceres, and the mullus prelatures of Chapada, Diamantino, Guajará-Mirim, and Registro do Araguaia, all subsequently separated from the archdiocese, which was left with an area of approximately 257,000 sq. km. and 80,000 inhabitants, and 11 parishes directed by the Salesians and the Franciscans; there is also the institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters). It has no seminary for the diocesan clergy. Its patron is Senhor Bom Jesus (feast, 1 January). The city of C., with 47,000 inhabitants, although the seat of the state government, is relatively unimportant. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to bring it into closer contact with the great coastal centers.
C. is one of the numerous cities of the Brazilian interior whose origin goes back to the “Bandeirantes” of S. Paolo. In 1718 some of them ventured as far as the locality now called Forquilonas to capture Indians as slaves. A year later they found gold there and began a settlement, erecting a chapel to Our Lady of the Rock. Shortly thereafter a large quantity of gold was discovered nearby (1723), causing the settlement to be moved; it received the name of Bom Jesus de C. and was soon enlarged by a multitude of adventurers, who subsequently populated that fertile wilderness, founding numerous settlements that in time became cities in their own right. Among these, Mato Grosso, formerly Vila Bela, became the seat of the provincial government, which was transferred to C. in 1820 and remained there. The religious history of C. likewise begins with the primitive chapel of Our Lady of the Rock, where the priest Joaquim Botelho celebrated the first Mass. The parish, erected at C. not long afterward by the bishop of Rio de Janeiro, was constituted the seat of the mullus prelature by the bull of Benedict XIV Candor lucis aeternae of 6 December 1746, and thereafter a diocese by the bull of Leo XII Sollicita catholicis gregis cura of 15 July 1826.
It has been an ecclesiastical metropolitan see since 10 March 1910, by virtue of the bull of Pius X Novus constituere. The cathedral of C., dedicated to Senhor Bom Jesus, is held in great veneration.