LILLA, DIOCESE of. – Diocese and capital city of the département du Nord in France.
It has an area of approximately 2,288 sq km and 1,077,399 inhabitants. The diocese is divided into two archdeaconries, L. and Flanders, and into five deaneries, and comprises a total of 377 parishes (plus the attached parish of Escobecques), served by 1,569 diocesan priests and 181 religious priests; it has two minor seminaries, a seminary of philosophy, and one of theology; 27 male and 247 female religious communities (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 246).
Pius X, by the decree Ut consulere of the S. Congregazione Concistoriale (5 Feb. 1913), established in the city of L. a vicariate apostolic, including the civil districts of L., Hazebrouck, and Dunkirk under one apostolic vicar, a titular bishop, as auxiliary to the archbishop of Cambrai (AAS, 5 [1913], p. 94); subsequently, by the letter Concistoriali decreto (25 Oct. 1913), he created the diocese of L., separating from the archdiocese of Cambrai the aforementioned territory of the vicariate apostolic, which before the French Revolution had been divided among the four dioceses of Tournai, Ypres, St-Omer, and Cambrai. At the same time, the church of Notre-Dame de la Treille in L. was elevated to the rank and dignity of a cathedral, and the diocese of L. was assigned as a suffragan of Cambrai (ibid., pp. 481–85). The Pontiff delegated Cardinal Luçon, archbishop of Reims, to the ceremony of the erection of the diocese, which took place on 10 Dec. 1913. The sole apostolic vicar and first bishop was Msgr. A. Charost in 1913, later cardinal archbishop of Rennes.
The settlement was called “Isla” as early as 1054, from the Latin insula, because of its distinctive position, resembling an island situated at the confluence of the two rivers Deule and Bucquet. But as early as 1030, Count Baldwin IV of Flanders had surrounded it with walls; conquered in 1213 by Philip Augustus of France, it soon returned to the power of the counts of Flanders, who made it a centre of the wool industry.
Having returned to France in 1320, it passed in 1369 to the duchy of Burgundy, becoming increasingly prosperous, especially in the fifteenth century under Duke Philip the Good; it then belonged to the Habsburgs, from whom Louis XIV took it in 1667. In 1708 it was conquered by Prince Eugene, but the Treaty of Utrecht definitively restored it to France. L.’s great urban development took place in the nineteenth century with the linen industry and, more recently, with the chemical industry, facilitated by its proximity to the coal basin.
Among the churches of L. are S. Maurizio, in the Gothic style; S. Caterina, built in the fifteenth century but altered in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; and S. Maddalena, with a central plan and dome, dating from the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Subsequently, the higher schools were added: 1) Hautes-Etudes industrielles (civil engineering, electrical engineering, chemistry); 2) Hautes-Etudes commerciales; 3) Ecole d'expertise-comptable; 4) Institut des sciences sociales et politiques; 5) Journalisme (the only higher school of its kind in France); 6) Ecole des missionnaires du travail (for ecclesiastics destined to be “aumôniers du travail”); 7) Ecole d'infirmieres hospitalieres; 8) Ecoles des sages-femmes, Service social, Pédagogie infantile.
Within the Catholic university district of France, L. comprises only the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai (dioceses: Cambrai, Lille, Arras), a region nevertheless flourishing in schools, industry, and commerce. The mixed Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, unique among all the Catholic Faculties of France, also receives students from other parts of the nation and from abroad (cf. letter of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness, 14 January 1913; AAS, 5 [1913], p. 53 ff.). Its Grand Chancellor is the bishop of L.
The University is housed in extensive buildings. The students, numbering 270 in 1877, now exceed 2,000.