LAHORE, DIOCESE OF. — Tradition holds that St. Thomas the Apostle also preached at Lahore. In 1591, invited by Akbar, the Mughal emperor, seventy descendants of Tamerlane arrived at Lahore. Some Jesuits accompanied them and in 1597 built a church open to worship, which they abandoned in 1614 after being expelled. The year 1624 saw a resumption of the mission, but it could not last due to the hostility of Akbar’s successor; the few remaining faithful were occasionally visited by missionaries from Agra and Delhi. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773), the Mughal mission was incorporated into the Apostolic Vicariate of Tibet-Hindustan, established in 1820 and entrusted to the Capuchins.
During and after the British occupation of the Punjab, the Capuchins, who followed the troops as chaplains, founded churches in various locations, including Lahore, Multan, and Rawalpindi. From 1835, the mission in the Punjab was attended to by the Ordinary of Agra, who, as superior of the mission, received the faculties of an Apostolic Prefect until 21 September 1880, when the Apostolic Vicariate of the Punjab (including Kashmir) was erected with its seat at Lahore. The Apostolic Vicariate was later elevated to a diocese in September 1886 and constituted as a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Agra under the name of Lahore. On 27 October 1888, the transfer of the diocese to the Capuchin Province of Belgium was authorized, and new missionaries arrived in Lahore on 9 March 1889. The territory underwent boundary modifications, with the detachment of the Apostolic Prefecture of Kafiristan and Kashmir (which became the Diocese of Rawalpindi in 1947) in 1887 and part of the Archdiocese of Delhi (now Delhi and Simla) in 1910. With the formation of the two independent States of India and Pakistan (15 August 1947), the Diocese of Lahore found itself with part of its territory in India and part in Pakistan. By a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide dated 14 July 1950, it was restricted to the portion within West Pakistan. On 15 July of the same year, with the establishment of the ecclesiastical province formed by the dioceses in West Pakistan, the Diocese of Lahore was declared a suffragan of the new metropolitan see of Karachi.
The diocese covers an area of 119,175 square kilometers and has a population of approximately 15 million (1949 statistics), mostly Muslim. There are 73,539 Catholics and 56,416 catechumens; Protestants number 250,000. There are about twenty primary stations, sixty secondary stations, with 27 churches and 116 chapels. The missionary personnel consists of 40 Belgian Capuchin priests, 2 indigenous priests, and ten brothers. About a hundred sisters, half foreign and half indigenous, assist, along with 112 catechists and 81 teachers, in the mission’s work within an environment rather resistant to Catholic Christian penetration. Instruction is provided in 17 elementary schools with about 3,000 children, 13 middle schools with 157 students, and 8 high schools with 265 pupils. There is also a normal school with 18 students. Charitable works include 3 orphanages, where 125 orphans are educated, and 2 dispensaries with 64,000 consultations annually. In Lahore, three periodicals are printed: *Catholic News* (500 copies), *Catholic Magazine* (600 copies), and *Collectanea Lahorensis* (180 copies). There is no seminary. Catholic Action associations are not lacking.
THE HAGUE — Portrait of Elisabeth Schmidt, work by H. Holbein. The Hague, Mauritshuis.
THE HAGUE. — City of the Netherlands; royal and government residence. It is also called *Gravenhage*, “Count’s Enclosure,” since in the mid-11th century the site was merely a hunting enclosure of the Counts of Holland. It currently has 522,000 inhabitants, of whom 120,000 are Catholic; its territory belongs to the Diocese of Haarlem.
Among the city’s principal buildings are the *Groote Kerk* (Great Church), dedicated to St. James the Greater, a three-aisled Gothic structure from the early 14th century. It preserves some 16th-century stained glass and a pulpit from 1550. It was sacked in 1528 and burned in 1559 and 1702.
The hexagonal bell tower was erected in 1432 and reaches 100 meters in height. The church is now occupied by Protestants.
