LA PAZ, ARCIDIOCESI di. — City and archdiocese in Bolivia, capital of the province of the same name. The archdiocese comprises the entire department of the same name and the province of Magdalena in the department of El Berni.
It has an area of 111,567 sq. km., with 1,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 980,000 are Catholics. It has 122 parishes, served by 48 diocesan priests and 86 religious priests, one seminary, 12 male and 14 female religious communities (Annuario Pontificio 1951, pp. 239–40).
The city of L. P. was founded in 1548 as Nuestra Señora de la Paz. The diocese was created on 4 July 1608 by Paul V, through the division of the diocese of Charcas. The first bishop appointed, Diego Zambrana y Guzman, did not take possession of it; he was followed by the Dominican Domenico Balderrama, Feliciano de la Vega, and Juan de Queipo Llano y Valdes, who completed the first cathedral. The first synodal constitutions were published by Bishop Juan de Dios Bosque (1874–90). The cathedral of N. S. de la Paz was begun in the 17th century, but the work proceeded with great slowness; in the 19th century it was resumed, and its architects were first the Bolivian Fr. M. Sanauja, then Vespignani, and finally Campanovo.
Other churches include that of S. Domenico, erected in 1590; the oldest is that of S. Sebastiano, originally dedicated to S. Pietro; in addition, there are the church and convent of the Concezione, the church and convent of the Mercede; the church of S. Giuseppe has a flourishing Jesuit college attached to it; and the churches of S. Teresa, S. Raffaele, the Buon Pastore, the Spirito Santo, etc. Pope Pius XII, by the apostolic constitution Ad spirituale bonum fidelium of 18 June 1943, separated L. P. from the ecclesiastical province of Sucre and elevated L. P. to a metropolitan see, assigning to it the dioceses of Cochabamba and Oruro as suffragans. Then the same Pontiff, by the apostolic constitution Quod Christiane plebis of 25 December 1949, created, through the division of the archdiocese of L. P., the prelature nullius of Corocoro as a suffragan of L. P.