CURAÇAO. – It is the largest (447 sq. km.) and most populous (80,000 inhabitants) of the six islands that constitute the Dutch Antilles (Nederlandsche Antillen-C.).
It lies, like Aruba and Bonaire, opposite the northern Venezuelan coast (the three together cover 918 sq. km. and have 120,000 inhabitants). The Dutch Antilles also include S. Martino (the southern half; the northern half is French), S. Eustachio, and Saba in the Leeward archipelago, east of Puerto Rico (76 sq. km. with 4,532 inhabitants). Altogether, the Dutch Antilles extend over 994 sq. km. and have 140,000 inhabitants, all of them Black except for 6,000 foreigners (1,600 Dutch), and are overwhelmingly Catholic.
More important in C. and Aruba than the tropical products (cotton, coconuts, cane sugar, cocoa, etc.), which are generally common to all the islands, is the refining of Venezuelan petroleum, carried out in three large plants. The two islands owe their economic prosperity to this recent activity.
The capital of the Dutch Antilles is Willemstad (40,000 inhabitants), in C., which serves as an outpost facing Venezuelan Maracaibo.
Giuseppe Caraci
THE APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF C. - It comprises the islands of C., Aruba, and Bonaire, commonly called the Dutch Antilles: they were discovered by Alonzo
de Ojeda in 1499 and remained in Spanish hands until 1643, when they were conquered by the Dutch.
The first missionaries were the Hieronymites, who went there from S. Domingo shortly after the Spanish conquest and remained there until the arrival of the Dutch, who expelled them and prohibited the practice of the Catholic religion. During the eighteenth century, the religious care of the faithful was provided by missionaries from various institutes and also by secular clergy, who settled on the island as colonists. In 1773, the apostolic prefecture was established; it was raised to a vicariate in 1842 and entrusted to the Dutch regular province of the Dominicans. The mission covers an area of 2,975 sq. km. According to the 1948 statistics, its spiritual condition is as follows: inhabitants 147,694, of whom 107,694 are Catholics, 37,100 Protestants, 1,700 Jews, and the remainder pagans. Priests: 57, of whom 3 are indigenous clergy; coadjutor brothers: 130; sisters: 319; seminarians: 2; teachers: 372. There are 24 parishes, 7 mission stations, 34 churches and chapels, 4 hospitals, 5 pharmacies, and approximately seventy elementary, middle, secondary, and vocational schools.