LITTLE ROCK, DIOCESI di. - City and diocese in the State of Arkansas (U.S.A.). Its boundaries coincide with those of the State of Arkansas.
The diocese has an area of 53,102 square miles, with 1,949,387 inhabitants, of whom 36,943 are Catholics. It comprises 103 parishes, 33 chapels, 36 missions, and 44 stations served by 113 diocesan priests and 52 regulars; one seminary, 6 male religious communities, among them the Benedictine abbey of New Subiaco, and 12 female communities; one college, 10 diocesan and parochial high schools; 59 parochial schools; in 1949 there were 544 conversions.
At the end of the 18th century the white population in Arkansas scarcely reached 400 souls; the area was first visited in 1820 by mons. Dubourg; the first secular priest to establish the mission of St. Mary, five miles from present-day Pine Bluff, was the rev. R. Bole, who in 1838 secured the opening of the first Catholic school in Arkansas. L. R. was raised to a diocese by Pius IX on 28 Nov. 1843; its first bishop was mons. A. Byrne (d. 1862).
The Cathedral is dedicated to St. Andrew. The first diocesan Synod was held on 16 Feb. 1909. The diocese is suffragan to New Orleans.