OLINDA e RECIFE, ARCIDIOCESI of. — In the State of Pernambuco (Brazil). It is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province whose boundaries coincide with those of the said State and include the suffragan dioceses of Pesqueira, Garanhuns, Nazareth, and Petrolina. The archdiocese covers approximately 14,539 sq. km. and has a population of 990,000 inhabitants, of whom 973,842 are Catholics. It has 47 parishes with 74 diocesan priests and 142 religious priests, two seminaries (at O.), 4 male and 27 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 296).
The ancient Cathedral is at O.; but the archbishop and his curia reside at R.
The first explorers of the Brazilian coast did not stop in Pernambuco. In 1534, Duarte Coelho, who received the region as an hereditary fief, laid the foundation of the future city of O., which soon flourished through the owner’s talent and the fertility of the region, becoming within a few years the colony’s leading exporter of sugar, which is still the State’s principal product. Such prosperity could not fail to attract the greed of adventurers, particularly the Dutch, who attacked the Brazilian coast near Pernambuco, forcing the Luso-Brazilians to withdraw (1630); the latter, however, recovered and inflicted a defeat on the Dutch at Guararapes (1649), finally compelling them to capitulate by the Treaty of 1661.
The ancient prelatura nullius of O., established before 1612 and subsequently annexed to the bishopric of Bahia, was erected as a suffragan diocese of Salvador by the bull Ad sacram beati Petri of 16 November 1676. In modern times, the Third National Eucharistic Congress (1939) and the Catholic intellectual movement deserve mention.
From the territory of the ancient diocese were detached Fortaleza (1854), João Pessoa (or Paraíba, 1892), and Maceió (1900), which today belong to corresponding ecclesiastical provinces, and finally the present suffragan dioceses mentioned above, to which Carnarú must be added. By decree of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation, O. became a metropolitan see in 1910, acquiring its present designation through the apostolic letter Cum urbe Recife of 26 July 1918.
Among the bishops of O. and R. are Manuel Alvares da Costa (1706–15); José da Cunha de Azeredo Coutinho (1795–1802); Vital Gonçalves de Oliveira (1871–78); and the archbishop Sebastião Leme da Silva Cintra (1916–21).
In the city of R. and its surroundings, not a few monuments of colonial art may be seen (v. Arte): such as the Seminary of O., and the churches of S. Pedro dos Clérigos, of Carmine, of the Third Order, etc. The remains of the old fortresses from the Dutch war are also of interest.