LOANDA, diocese of. - City and archdiocese in Angola. From the 15th century onward, that is, from the period of discovery, the territories of Congo and Angola were the object of missionary apostolate and subsequently belonged to the jurisdiction of the Order of Christ until 1514 and to that of the bishopric of Funchal until 1596, when Clement VIII erected the diocese of Angola and Congo, without precise boundaries and as a suffragan of the archbishopric of Lisbon. D. Miguel Rangel was its first bishop, and the episcopal see remained at S. Salvadore do Congo until 1676; thereafter it was definitively established at L.
In 1940, following the missionary agreement between the Holy See and the Portuguese government, on 4 September, by the bull Solenibus conventionibus, L. was erected into an archdiocese.
Over an area of 530,000 sq. km., it has 1,500,000 inhabitants, of whom 223,000 are Catholics, distributed among 51 parishes served by 26 diocesan priests and 62 religious, with 20 male and 33 female religious communities, a flourishing seminary, and 14 charitable institutions. It publishes the newspaper: O apostolado. It has three suffragans: Nuova Lisbona, S. Tommaso, Silva Port (Annuario Pontif., 1951, p. 251).
Alexandre do Nascimento