NAPO, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF. — Established by the Holy See in 1867 in the territory of the ancient mission of the Marañón (eastern part of the Republic of Ecuador) and entrusted in 1671 to the Jesuits, who had entered that region as early as 1638 but had to leave it in 1768, being succeeded first by the secular clergy and then by the Dominicans.
The extent of the mission of N., which included all the eastern part of Ecuador, diminished in 1886 when the apostolic prefecture of Macas and Canelos was detached from it, and then in 1893 when the apostolic vicariates of Méndez and Gualaquiza and that of Zamora were dismembered from II. After the revolution of 1875, when President García Moreno was killed, difficulties increased for the mission of N., which from that time was assisted by priests of the archdiocese of Quito. Finally, in 1920 the vicariate of N. was entrusted to the Josephites of Murialdo.
Today it has a territory of 52,000 sq. km. with a population of 22,500 inhabitants, of whom about 20,000 are Catholics. The mission staff comprises 14 priests, 18 lay brothers, 21 Dorothea and Vincentian sisters, with 4 main stations and 10 secondary ones, 4 churches, 6 chapels, 2 colleges for Indians and 1 for white girls, 5 elementary schools, 2 vocational schools, 4 pharmacies, and 1 hospital. The missionaries have also carried out assiduous work of civilization, for which they have received praise from the government and the press. The mission presents particular difficulties for evangelization due to the lack of roads and means of communication, dangerous rivers, the enervating climate, the nomadic life of the indigenous people, and the often scandalous conduct of the whites. By a decree of Propaganda Fide dated 12 April 1951, the boundaries were modified to the south with the apostolic prefecture of Canelos and to the north with that of St Michael of Sucumbíos, which ceded part of its territory to the apostolic vicariate of N.