LEIRIA, Diocese of. - City and diocese located 147 km north of Lisbon (Portugal). It has an area of 1,700 sq km with a population of 174,000 inhabitants, of whom 164,000 are Catholics. It has 61 parishes, 98 diocesan priests and 15 regulars, one seminary, 3 male religious communities and 13 female ones (1949).
The origin of the diocese of L. is found in the profound changes made, in the 16th century, to the jurisdiction of the monastery of S. Croce of Coimbra. In fact, at the request of John III, king of Portugal, Paul III with the bull Pro excellenti Apostolicae Sedis (22 May 1545) detached L. from the diocese of Coimbra and made it an independent diocese, free from the jurisdiction that, under various titles, the prior-mor (major prior) of S. Croce, the bishop of Coimbra and the archbishop of Braga exercised over it, and annexed it to the ecclesiastical province of Lisbon. With the bull Gravissimum Christi Ecclesiam regendi et gubernandi munus (30 Sept. 1881) Leo XIII authorized the ecclesiastical reduction of Portugal so desired by the sectarian government of the time, and entrusted its execution to the bishop of Oporto, Card. D. Americo. Thus, by his verdict, dated 4 Sept. 1882, confirmed by royal letter of the 14th of the same month, various dioceses were suppressed, among them L., whose parishes were divided between the dioceses of Coimbra and the patriarchate of Lisbon. But the restoration movement, due especially to some zealous priests, was not long in coming. Finally, Benedict XV, with the apostolic letter Quo vehementius (17 Jan. 1918), restored the diocese of L. and established in the cathedral church of St. Mary of the Assumption a Chapter of six canons with two dignities.
Within the territory of the diocese rises the sanctuary of Fatima (v.).