LIEPAJA, DIOCESI di. — City and diocese in Latvia. It has an area of 26,830 sq km and a population of 592,028 inhabitants, of whom 89,677 are Catholics, with 30 churches and 40 parishes; it is a suffragan of Riga.
The diocese was created by Pope Pius XI through the apostolic constitution Aeterna animarum salus of 8 May 1937, by detaching from the diocese of Riga the civil districts of Courland and Semigallia, and raising to the rank and dignity of a cathedral the parish church of S. Giuseppe existing in the city of L.
BIBL.: AAS, 29 (1937), pp. 384–86. Enrico Josi