Mandalay, Apostolic Vicariate of

MANDALAY, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF. - Like the apostolic vicariate of Southern Burma (Rangoon), that of M. too, erected on 19 July 1870, for North-

Northern Burma, derives from the splitting up of the apostolic vicariate of Ava and Pegu, and received its present name on 5 Jan. 1939.

The whole territory is crossed, from north to south, by the Irrawaddy River and has a flat part that extends mostly along the Irrawaddy River and another, toward the borders of India, mountainous and sparsely inhabited.

The mission, entrusted to the Society for Foreign Missions of Paris, has an area of 22,000 sq km with 5,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 4,300,000 are Buddhists, 270,000 animists, 100,000 Hindus, 80,000 Muslims, 10,000 Protestants and 15,000 Catholics; it comprises 22 quasi-parishes, 29 primary stations and 90 secondary ones, with 8 churches and 70 chapels, served by 21 native priests, 17 from the Foreign Missions of Paris and 6 Salesians, assisted by 8 brothers and about a hundred Sisters. It has a minor seminary, 32 elementary schools, 6 middle schools, 6 higher schools, 4 vocational schools. The mission also has various works of charity and welfare, among them 1 leprosarium, and also 7 confraternities, and associations of piety and of Catholic Action are not lacking. The movement of conversion, very difficult among the Buddhists, offers instead good hopes among the animists.

Pompeo Borgna