HONOLULU. - Capital (300,000 inhabitants) of the Polynesian archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands (about twenty islands, eight of which are major; total area 17,000 sq. km), which has constituted since 1900 an external territory of the United States.
The islands are all elevated and volcanic; Mauna Loa (4,170 m) on the largest island (Hawaii) is active. The inhabitants (503,000) are ethnically mixed: Caucasians, Japanese, Hawaiians and mestizos, Filipinos, etc. The islands produce sugarcane, coffee, tobacco, and tropical fruits; they are of great military (Pearl Harbor naval base) and commercial (port of Honolulu) importance due to their position in the center of the North Pacific.
Diocese of H. - The first to evangelize the Sandwich Islands or Hawaii were the missionaries of the Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary of the Belgian religious province, led by Fr. A. Bachelot, who had been appointed Apostolic Prefect on December 3, 1825. But at the end of 1827 the missionaries were expelled and deported to California. By an apostolic decree of May 20, 1833, the mission of the Sandwich Islands became the base of the Apostolic Vicariate of Polynesia or Eastern Oceania, still entrusted to the same missionaries.
The Apostolic Vicariate of the Sandwich Islands was erected on August 13, 1844. On January 25, 1941, the Diocese of Honolulu was erected as a suffragan of San Francisco.
The diocese covers an area of 20,480 sq. km with a population of 522,000, of whom 145,000 are Catholic (1948); it has 105 churches, 4 chapels, 60 missions, 50 parishes, 5 diocesan priests and 113 religious; 5 male and 8 female religious communities; a diocesan seminary, 6 high schools, 20 parochial elementary schools; in 1946 there were 635 conversions.
The cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady of Peace.