POONA [PUNE], Diocese of. - In central-southern India. The territory first 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 Poona: the first entrusted to the Jesuits and the other to the Capuchins.
Owing to 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 southern apostolic vicariate, or Poona, was elevated, on 1 September 1886, to a diocese suffragan 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 good 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), 52 Jesuits, almost all foreigners, work there, along with 23 Indian secular priests, for the most part of Goan or Mangalorean stock, and about eighty sisters, both native 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 higher schools. Charitable institutions are represented by 8 orphanages, 2 homes for the aged, 5 dispensaries, a printing press, various workshops and laboratories. There are numerous confraternities and pious associations and associations of Catholic Action. Beside the "De Nobili" college of the Jesuits, under construction, is a large pontifical seminary, in which seminarians coming from all the dioceses of India will be admitted to obtain academic degrees in the philosophical and theological sciences.