Cuiabá, Archdiocese of

CUIABÁ, Archdiocese of. - In the center of the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its suffragan dioceses are Corumbá and São Luís de Cáceres, and the nullius prelatures of Chapada, Diamantino, Guajará-Mirim and Registro do Araguaia, all subsequently detached from the archdiocese, which remained with an area of about 257,000 sq km and 80,000 inhabitants, 11 parishes directed by the Salesians and the Franciscans; there is also the institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesians). It does not possess a seminary for the diocesan clergy. Its patron is the Senhor Bom Jesus (feast January 1). The city of C., with 47,000 inhabitants, although the seat of the State government, is relatively of little importance. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to bring it closer to the great centers of the coast.

C. is one of the numerous cities of the Brazilian interior whose origin goes back to the « Bandeirantes » of São Paulo. In 1718 some of them pushed as far as the locality today called Forquilonas to capture Indians as slaves. A year later they found gold on the spot and began a village there, erecting a chapel to Our Lady of the Rock. Shortly afterward a great quantity of gold was discovered in the vicinity (1723), which caused the village to be moved; it received the name of Bom Jesus de C., soon increased by a multitude of adventurers, who then populated that fertile desert, founding numerous settlements that in time became as many cities. Among these, Mato Grosso, formerly Vila Bela, was the seat of the government of the province, which in 1820 was transferred and remained at C. The religious history of C. also has its beginning in the primitive chapel of Our Lady of the Rock, where the priest Joaquim Botelho said the first Mass. The parish, erected not long afterward at C. by the bishop of Rio de Janeiro, was made the seat of the nullius prelature by the bull of Benedict XIV Candor lucis aeternae of December 6, 1746, and then a diocese by the bull of Leo XII Sollicita catholicis gregis cura of July 15, 1826.

It has been an ecclesiastical metropolis since March 10, 1910, by virtue of the bull of Pius X Novus constituere. The cathedral of C., dedicated to the senhor Bom Jesus, is much venerated.

Maurilio Cesar de Lima