MACAO, diocese of. – City and diocese in China. It forms a peninsula beside the southeast coast of China, in the midst of the delta formed by the West and Canton Rivers. It also includes a small archipelago, consisting of the Islands of Taipa, Coloane (the most important and the only ones completely occupied), Don Giovanni (or Macariva), Lapa, and Vong-Kan (or Mountain Island).
Over an area of 28 sq. km., it has 374,737 inhabitants, of whom 23,000 are Catholics, distributed among 28 parishes, with 46 diocesan priests and 30 regular priests, one seminary, 5 male and 5 female religious communities, and 20 educational institutions (1949).
The history of Catholicism in M. is China (v.). After Portuguese rule in China had been established through the work of Lusitanian navigators and merchants, M. was incorporated by the Jesuit missionaries into the historic Portuguese Patronage of the Order, first under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Funchal (Madeira Islands, west of Portugal) and subsequently under that of Goa (India).
By the bull Super specula militantis Ecclesiae of 1576, Pope Gregory XIII, at the request of the king of Portugal, Don Sebastiano, and in order to provide for the needs arising from the progress of Christianity in the Far East, erected the new diocese of M., separating it from the diocese to which it had until then been suffragan. It then comprised all of China, Japan, the Moluccas, and other neighboring lands and islands.
In 1588 Japan was constituted as a separate bishopric (Funaia), and in 1690 China received its own dioceses, Beijing and Nanjing. In 1903, by virtue of a decree of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the bishop of M. and the apostolic vicar of Canton exchanged, respectively, their jurisdiction over the island of Hai-Nam and the district of Shiu-Hing. More recently, in 1940, under the missionary agreement between the Holy See and the Portuguese government, concluded following the signing of the Concordat, Timor too was separated and erected as the separate diocese of Dili (capital).