NAPO, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE of. — Erected by the Holy See in 1867 in the territory of the ancient mission of Marañon (the eastern part of the Republic of Ecuador), which had been entrusted in 1671 to the Jesuits, who had entered that region as early as 1638 but had been forced to leave it in 1768; they were succeeded first by the secular clergy and then by the Dominicans.
The extent of the mission of N., which comprised the entire eastern part of Ecuador, was reduced in 1886, when the apostolic prefecture of Macas and Canelos was detached from it, and then in 1893, when the apostolic vicariates of Mendez and Gualaqiusa and that of Zamora were dismembered from II. After the revolution of 1875, when President Garcia Moreno was assassinated, the difficulties facing the mission of N. increased; from that time it was assisted by priests of the archdiocese of Quito. Finally, in 1920, the vicariate of N. was entrusted to the Giuseppini of Murialdo.
Today it has a territory of 52,000 sq. km., with a population of 22,500 inhabitants, approximately 20,000 of them Catholics. The mission personnel comprises 14 priests, 18 lay brothers, and 21 Dorotean Sisters of Vicenza, with 4 principal stations and 10 secondary ones, 4 churches, 6 chapels, 2 colleges for Indians and 1 for girls of the white race, 5 elementary schools, 2 vocational schools, 4 pharmacies, and 1 hospital. The missionaries have also carried out sustained work of civilization, for which they have received praise from the government and the public press. The mission presents particular difficulties for evangelization because of the lack of roads and means of communication, the dangerous rivers, the enervating climate, the nomadic life of the indigenous peoples, and the conduct, often scandalous, of the whites. By a decree of Propaganda dated 12 Apr. 1951, the boundaries were modified to the south with the apostolic prefecture of Canelos and to the north with that of S. Michele di Sucumbios, which ceded part of its territory to the apostolic vicariate of N.