LORENZO MARQUES (LOURENÇO MARQUES), ARCIDIOCESI of. — Capital of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique (East Africa). It has an area of 164,011 sq km, with 1,290,315 inhabitants, of whom 104,770 are Catholics; it has 31 parishes, 24 diocesan priests and 41 religious priests, one seminary, 20 male and 19 female religious communities (Ann. Pontif., 1951, p. 253).
It may be said that the evangelization of Mozambique began in 1506, when the Portuguese, having just landed there, built the fort of Sofala. Pius IV, by the bull Superna dispositione of 12 Feb. 1563, granted the king of Portugal the power to appoint ecclesiastical administrators for the kingdoms of Ormus, Mozambique, and Sofala, which belonged to the diocese of Goa. At the request of Philip II, Pope Paul V, by the brief In supereminenti of 21 Jan. 1612, detached Mozambique, from Cape Guardafui to the Cape of Good Hope, from the diocese of Goa and made it a vicariate or spiritual administration. Domenico Torrado, titular bishop of Sale, was the first administrator of Mozambique. The seat of the prelature was first at Sena and then on the island of Mozambique.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits had several missions and schools in Mozambique, at Sena and Tete. But in 1757, with their expulsion from Portugal and its colonies, the missionary needs of Mozambique were soon forgotten. At the request of Maria I, queen of Portugal, Pius VI granted that the prelates of Mozambique be consecrated bishops.
With the missionary agreement signed by the Holy See with Portugal on 6 May 1940, the prelature was suppressed and the three dioceses of L. M., Beira, and Nampula were created. Pius XII, by the apostolic constitution Solemnibus conventionibus of 4 Sept. 1940, sanctioned the establishment of the three dioceses and erected L. M. as an archdiocese, with the dioceses of Beira and Nampula as suffragans. In the Consistory of 18 Feb. 1946, Teodosio Clemente De Gouveia, the first archbishop of L. M., was elevated to the cardinalate.