LES GONAIVES, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese on the island of Haiti (Antilles), capital of the Artibonite department.
It has an area of 6,000 sq. km. with a population of 500,000 inhabitants, of whom 475,000 are Catholics. It comprises 15 parishes, served by 30 diocesan priests, has a seminary, 3 male and 7 female religious communities (Anuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 245). The diocese was created by Pius IX on 3 Oct. 1861, but was only occupied in 1928 with the appointment to it of Mgr. F. Juliot. The Sacred Consistorial Congregation, by decree of 25 June 1929, dismembered from the diocese of Cap-Haïtien the parishes of Hinche, Maisadé, Marmelade and St. Michel, uniting them to those of L. G., so that the entire territory of the civil province of Artibonite was contained within the said diocese (AAS, 21 [1929], pp. 558-59). The diocese is a suffragan of Port-au-Prince.