Monrovia, Apostolic Vicariate of

MONROVIA, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF. - It is the name recently assumed by the ancient apostolic vicariate of Liberia (v.), after the division (Feb. 2, 1950) of its territory to erect the apostolic prefecture of Cape Palmas.

The boundary is marked by the Negben or Cestos River. The approximately most reliable data of the present apostolic vicariate thus reduced are the following: area 53,240 sq. km.; pop. 1,750,000, Catholics 3,826, of whom 92 are foreign; native priests 1, foreign 11; seminaries 2 major and 2 minor; teachers 43; schools 13, with 2,711 pupils.

then carried out by Lacordaire. He became a religious at Flavigny (May 31, 1855), and began his oratorical career in 1857 at Lyon.

From 1857 to 1865 he gave the 40 conferences of Introduction au dogme catholique, which, collected in four volumes, are even today one of the most complete and effective courses of propaedeutics and of apologetics of revealed truth. In that same period of time, M. preached with great success at Brussels and at London. In the Advent of 1869 he ascended for the first time the pulpit of Notre-Dame in Paris to treat a theme of great topicality: Le Concile et le Jubilé. Called by Msgr. Darboy, archbishop of Paris, in 1870, to succeed Fr. Félix in the Lenten preaching, he was prevented from doing so by the Franco-Prussian War until 1872. In the first Lenten series at Notre-Dame he developed the theme: Radicalisme contre radicalisme, treating of the duties of Christians toward the family and society. The 108 conferences of the Exposition du dogme catholique were delivered from 1873 to 1890; they were regularly followed, from 1872 to 1890, by the Retraites pascales, preached during Holy Week, in preparation for Easter. He also wrote: Discours et panégyriques (6 vols.); Petits coréines (2 vols.); La prédication Avant-Pendant-Après; La prière (2 vols.); Philosophie et théologie de la prière; La prière divine ou le Pater; Petites méditations pour la récitation du St-Rosaire; Gouttes de vérité (a small philosophical and religious dictionary); Or et alliage dans la vie dévote (an ascetical opuscule, which teaches how to discern reasonable devotion from its easy counterfeits).

The talent and the oratorical works of M. won the most unanimous admiration of his contemporaries, in France and outside it; he remains even today a model orator: a master of the word, he dominates the whole field of divine and human knowledge, always showing himself a profound connoisseur of Sacred Scripture, of the Holy Fathers, of theology, of history and of the profane sciences. His oratory is less brilliant and genial than that of Lacordaire, but more substantial and persuasive; his manner of speaking is always clear.

The works of M. were almost all translated into Italian: the Introduction and the Exposition through the work of Msgr. G. Bonomelli (new ed., Turin 1947-51, with notes and appendices).

Luigi Ciappi