GUADALAJARA, Archdiocese of
Archdiocese and city in the State of Jalisco, Mexico.
It covers an area of 52,000 sq. km. and has a population of 1,407,680 inhabitants, of whom 1,379,680 are Catholics; it comprises 128 parishes served by 632 secular priests and 64 regular priests, two seminaries, 32 male religious communities and 130 female religious communities (1949).
The diocese was created by Paul III on 13 July 1548 by separation from the diocese of Michoacán; the bishop, however, had his residence in Compostela in the province of Tepic. Pius IV transferred it to Guadalajara in 1560.
Bishop F. Galindo y Chávez (d. 1702) founded the seminary in 1699 and established a library there. Bishop A. Alcalde, transferred from Yucatán to the see of Guadalajara in 1771, founded the university and the hospital of S. Miguel de Belén. Pope Pius IX raised Guadalajara to the status of an archdiocese on 19 March 1863; its suffragan sees are the dioceses of Aguas Calientes, Colima, Tepic and Zacatecas.
The cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed into Heaven, was begun in 1571, completed in 1618 and consecrated in 1716; in the sacristy there is admired a painting of the Blessed Virgin by Murillo.
To the west of the city and contiguous to the seminary stands the church of St Monica, notable for its characteristic and sumptuous exterior. Other notable churches are those of St Francis, with a Baroque façade and two domes (1550); the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whose interior is decorated with allegories drawn from Holy Scripture; and also the churches of St Philip Neri and St Augustine.
The city of Guadalajara was founded in April 1530 by Cristóbal de Oñate, who named it Espíritu Santo, but in 1542 changed its name to Guadalajara because it was the birthplace of his companion Nuño de Guzmán.