MATAGALPA, DIOCESE of. — Diocese and capital city of the department of the same name in Nicaragua.
It has an area of 18,600 sq km and a population of 240,000 inhabitants, almost all Catholics. It has 14 parishes served by 11 diocesan priests; it has a seminary and 4 women’s religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 266).
The diocese was created by Pope XI with the apostolic constitution Animarum soluti of 19 December 1924, by detaching from the archdiocese of Managua the two departments of M. and Jinotega. The first bishop was Mgr Isidoro Carrilli y Salazar; the current bishop is Mgr Ottavio Giuseppe Calderón y Padilla. It is suffragan to Managua.
BIBL.: AAS, 21 (1929), pp. 513-16; Enc. Eur. Am., XXXIII, p. 841. Enrico Josi