LUÇON, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the department of Vendée in France. The diocese has the same boundaries as the department; it has an area of about 6,723 sq km with a population of 400,000 inhabitants, of whom 392,000 are Catholics. It is divided into 2 archdeaconries, 4 archpriesthoods, 30 deaneries and 304 parishes; it has 611 diocesan priests and 125 regulars, a major and a minor seminary; 1 male religious community and 20 female ones (Annuario Pontificio 1951, p. 256).
The diocese was created by Pope John XXII on 13 Aug. 1317 by dismemberment of the diocese of Poitiers, on which the Benedictine abbey of L. depended; it was erected in 675, destroyed in the 9th and 11th centuries, rebuilt at the end of the same century, with its church consecrated on 19 Apr. 1121, and raised to a cathedral in 1317. The monastery was secularized in 1468 by Paul II. Following the Concordat it was suppressed on 29 Nov. 1801 and annexed to that of La Rochelle; re-established on 27 July 1817, it was reduced by some parishes transferred to the diocese of Nantes and increased by the territory of the suppressed see of Maillezis, which had been erected in 1317 by John XXII.
Among its prelates are remembered Nicolas Coeur (1441-51), the cardinals Jean de Lorraine (1523-24), Louis de Bourbon (1524-27), Jacques Duplessis-Richelieu (1584-92) and Armand Duplessis-Richelieu (1606-23); the bishops De Mercy (1775-90) and R. F. Soyer (1821-45).
The Cathedral is dedicated to Mary Most Holy.
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Enrico Josi