PENEDO, DIOCESI di. – City and diocese in the State of Alagôas in Brazil.
It has an area of 16,643 sq. km., with a population of 454,000 inhabitants, of whom 450,000 are Catholics. It has
18 parishes, with 22 diocesan priests and 15 religious priests, one seminary, 3 male and 3 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 314).
The diocese was created by Pope Benedict XV by the apostolic constitution Catholicae Ecclesiae cura of 3 April 1916, through the partition of the diocese of Alagôas, and the mother church dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary existing in P. was elevated to cathedral status. The first bishop of the diocese was Msgr. Giona de Araujo Batinga (1916–40). The diocese is suffragan to Maceió.
BIBL.: AAS, 8 (1916), pp. 169–71; G. B. Lehmann, O Brasil Católico 1947, Juiz de Fora 1947, pp. 275–79. Virginio Battezzati