POONA, DIOCESE OF
In south-central India. The territory originally belonged to the Apostolic Vicariate of Bombay; on 8 March 1854 it was divided into two Apostolic Vicariates: the northern, or Bombay, and the southern, or P. The first was entrusted to the Jesuits and the second to the Capuchins.
Because of the scarcity of personnel on the part of the latter, the mission passed in 1858 to the Jesuits of the religious province of Germany. The Apostolic Vicariate of the south, or of P., was elevated on 1 September 1886 to the status of 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 confreres 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 about 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), there are 52 Jesuits working there, almost all foreigners, 23 Indian secular priests, mostly of Goan or Mangalorean origin, and about eighty sisters, both indigenous and foreign, belonging to various religious institutes.
The diocese has 28 churches and 31 chapels. It is divided into 9 districts, 28 quasi-parishes, 4 rural deaneries and 170 secondary stations. Instruction is given in 58 elementary schools, 7 middle schools and 9 high schools. Charitable institutions include 6 orphanages, 2 homes for the elderly, 5 dispensaries, a printing press, various workshops and laboratories. There are numerous confraternities and pious and Catholic Action associations. Beside the Jesuit “De Nobili” College, which is under construction, there is a large pontifical seminary, in which seminarians from all the dioceses of India will be admitted to pursue academic degrees in philosophical and theological sciences.