POONA, diocese of. — In central-southern India. The territory initially belonged to the apostolic vicariate of Bombay; on 8 March 1854 it was divided into the two apostolic vicariates: northern, or of Bombay, and southern, or of P.: the former entrusted to the Jesuits and the latter to the Capuchins.
Because of the shortage of personnel among the latter, the mission passed in 1858 to the Jesuits of the religious province of Germany. The southern apostolic vicariate, or that of P., was raised, on 1 September 1886, to a suffragan diocese of Bombay. After a long and fruitful apostolate, the German Jesuits were forced, at the beginning of the First World War, to abandon the mission, and were replaced by confrères of various nationalities, until in 1922 the diocese was provisionally entrusted to the religious province of Aragon. Around 1930 the Jesuits of the northern German religious province were able to return to the diocese. On 12 May 1949 the transfer of the diocese to the care of the Indian secular clergy was decreed.
It has an area of 150,000 sq km and embraces a large part of the Deccan region. The population amounts to approximately 10 million souls, of whom 9,400,000 are pagans, 500,000 Muslims, 51,000 Catholics, 25,000 Protestants, and 500 Jews. According to the latest statistics (1951), 52 Jesuits, almost all foreigners, 23 Indian secular priests, mostly of Goan or Mangalorean stock, and about eighty sisters, both indigenous and foreign, belonging to various religious institutes, are working there.
The diocese has 28 churches and 31 chapels. It is divided into 9 districts, 28 quasi-parishes, 4 deaneries, and 170 secondary stations. Instruction is provided in 58 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 9 secondary schools. Charitable institutions include 8 orphanages, 2 homes for the elderly, 5 dispensaries, a printing press, and various workshops and workrooms. Confraternities and pious associations and Catholic Action organizations are numerous. Beside the Jesuit « De Nobili » college, now under construction, there is a large
pontifical seminary, to which seminarians from all the dioceses of India will be admitted in order to obtain academic degrees in the philosophical and theological sciences.