Mangalore [Mangaluru], Diocese of

MANGALORE [MANGALURU], Diocese of. - In south-western India; it comprises the civil district of South Canara (province of Madras). It borders on the Arabian Sea, on the archdiocese of Goa, and on the dioceses of Calicut and Mysore.

It measures 6,032 sq. km. in area and has over 2 million inhabitants: 169,271 Catholics, 13,500 Protestants, 245,787 Muslims, 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 (among them 19 high schools and 3 university colleges), 47 charitable and welfare institutions (among them 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 of other religious families, resident in Goa, worked there. It does not appear that St. Francis Xavier visited the southern part of Canara. At M., however, the tradition still prevails that many Goan Christians, descendants of those converted by Xavier, took refuge at Bednore to escape the incursions of Shivaji and of his son Sambhaji, of the royal Maratha line.

Famous is the persecution unleashed by the sultan of Mysore, Tipu Sahib, who in 1784 had the Catholics deported en masse to Seringapatam, whence they repatriated to the number of 20,000 in 1800.

The mission was at first part of the archdiocese of Goa, then of the apostolic vicariate of Sierra del Malabar, and was then erected into the Canara or M. apostolic vicariate (1845), entrusted first to the Society of Jesus. On the occasion of the erection of the Indian hierarchy (1 Sept. 1886), it was elevated to a diocese, constituted the following year as a suffragan of Pondichéry, later becoming in 1893 a suffragan of Bombay. The diocese of Calicut was in part detached from it in 1923. With the appointment of an Indian bishop from the secular clergy, which took place in 1931, the diocese passed in fact to that clergy.

Pompeo Borena