MANGALORE, DIOCESE of. — In southwestern India; it comprises the civil district of South Canara (province of Madras). It borders the Arabian Sea, the archdiocese of Goa, and the dioceses of Calicut and Mysore.
It covers an area of 6,032 sq. km. and has more than 2 million inhabitants: 169,271 Catholics, 13,500 Protestants, 245,787 Muslims, and 1,600,000 Hindus. It has 82 quasi-parishes and is served by 175 diocesan priests and 34 religious, assisted by 7 male and 45 female religious communities; 165 schools (including 19 secondary schools and 3 university colleges), and 47 charitable and welfare institutions (including hospitals and leprosariums). The confraternities, pious associations, and associations of Catholic Action are numerous and well organized.
The evangelization of the territory began in the 16th century with Franciscan missionaries; later, missionaries from other religious families, residing in Goa, worked there. It does not appear that St. Francesco Saverio visited the southern part of Canara. In M. there nevertheless still survives the tradition that many Goan Christians, descendants of those converted by Saverio, took refuge in Bednore to escape the incursions of Shivayhi and his son Sambaghi, of the royal dynasty of the
Marathas. Famous was the persecution unleashed by the sultan of Mysore, Tipu Sahib, who in 1784 had the Catholics deported en masse to Seringapatam, whence 20,000 of them returned to their homeland in 1800.
The mission initially formed part of the archdiocese of Goa, then of the apostolic vicariate of Sierra del Malabar, and was subsequently erected as the Canarese or M. apostolic vicariate (1845), entrusted at first to the Society of Jesus. On the occasion of the establishment of the Indian hierarchy (1 September 1886), it was elevated to a diocese and, the following year, constituted as a suffragan of Pondichéry; it then became a suffragan of Bombay in 1893. Part of the diocese of Calicut was detached from it in 1923. With the appointment of an Indian bishop from the secular clergy in 1931, the diocese effectively passed to that clergy.