LIEPAJA, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in Latvia. It has an area of 26,830 sq. km. with a population of 592,028, of whom 86,677 are Catholics, served by 50 churches and 40 parishes, and it is a suffragan of Riga.
The diocese was erected by Pope Pius XI with the apostolic constitution *Aeterna animarum salus* of 8 May 1937, by separating from the Diocese of Riga the civil districts of Courland and Semigallia, and raising the parish church of St Joseph in the city of Liepāja to the rank and dignity of a cathedral.
BIBL.: AAS, 29 (1937), pp. 384-86.