NICOBAR. — Group of islands in the Bay of Bengal north of the island of Sumatra; twelve of them are inhabited by a population of approximately 10,000 inhabitants.
The N. archipelago remained politically independent until 1869, when England took possession of II. The first attempt at evangelization was made by Gherardo Cortenovis, apostolic vicar of Ava-Pegu (Burma), who died there (1794). In 1835, two missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions, Paolo Supriès and Alessandro Calabert, went to the N. Because of fevers, they were forced to leave the islands, after having baptized only one child in articulo mortis. Today the N. belong to the diocese of Malacca.
BIBL.: A. Launay, Histoire des missions de l'Inde, I, Parigi 1898, pp. 250-318. Nicola Kowalsky