LEÓN, DIOCESE of. - City and diocese in Nicaragua.
It has an area of 18,225 sq km with 327,974 inhabitants, of whom 318,285 are Catholics; it counts 51 parishes served by 39 diocesan priests and 26 regulars; it has a seminary, 11 male religious communities and 11 female ones (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, pp. 243-44).
The diocese was created on 3 Nov. 1534 with the title of Nicaragua and with residence in L., a city founded in 1523. The first bishop was Msgr. Diego Alvarez. At the beginning it seems to have been a suffragan of Mexico or of Lima, but Pope Benedict XIV made it a suffragan of Guatemala. Pope Pius X, by decree of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial of 2 Dec. 1913, removed the diocese of Nicaragua from the metropolitan see of Guatemala, dividing it into four parts and constituting a new ecclesiastical province. The bishop of Nicaragua, who had his see in L., left the title of Nicaragua to assume that of bishop of L. in Central America, the see remaining in L. and becoming a suffragan of the new metropolitan see of Managua.