MADRAS, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - It is situated in the south-eastern part of India, entrusted to the Salesian Society of St John Bosco. Initially it formed part of the diocese of St Thomas of Meliapore, detached in 1606 from the archdiocese of Goa. The first attempts at evangelisation of the Telugus in Chandragiri and Vellore date from the early 17th century, through the work of two Italian Jesuits, Frs Francesco Ricci (1601) and Antonio Rubino (1607), who were later martyred in Japan. The kingdoms of Vellore and Golconda, together with half of that of Gingi, subsequently formed, from 1640 to 1688, the mission of Carnatic, which was detached from the Madurai mission in 1704 and entrusted to the Jesuits expelled from Siam. Other religious orders also contributed to the development of the mission, such as the Theatines, Carmelites and Capuchins.
With the suppression of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit missionaries, who mostly remained in place, were affiliated, in the main, to the Seminary of the Foreign Missions of Paris, entrusted with this mission in 1776. Various vicissitudes and a jurisdictional conflict with the Ordinary of Goa finally led the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda to undertake an apostolic visitation, after which a vicariate apostolic was created in Madras in 1831, definitively erected on 25 April 1834 and entrusted to the Augustinian Hermits, to whom Irish secular priests were added. In 1875 some missionaries of the Mill Hill Society arrived among the Telugus. The vicariate apostolic was elevated to the archdiocese of Madras on 1 September 1886, constituted as a metropolitan see with the suffragan sees of Vizagapatam and Hyderabad on 7 June 1887. The territory underwent several boundary changes, especially with the erection of new missionary circumscription.
The diocese now has 7 suffragan dioceses: Bellary, Bezwada, Cuttack, Guntur, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Nellore, Vizagapatam, and the apostolic prefecture of Jabalpur. It borders on St Thomas of Meliapore, Pondicherry, Salem, Bangalore and Nellore. Over an area of 16,340 sq. km., it has 4,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 70,400 are Catholics, distributed in 41 parishes and more than 1,800 primary and secondary stations, served by 38 diocesan priests and 66 religious, assisted by 7 male and 19 female religious congregations. It has 93 educational institutions (including 4 vocational schools and one normal school) and 18 charitable and welfare institutions (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 259).
