Saint John, Diocese of Quebec

SAINT JOHN, DIOCESE OF QUEBEC. - City and diocese on the island of Puerto Rico, between the Antilles and the Atlantic.

It has an area of 3,430 sq km with a population of 1,200,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,130,000 are Catholics, distributed in 65 parishes, served by 41 diocesan priests and 132 religious; it has a seminary, 20 male religious communities and 35 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 354). The diocese is immediately subject to the Holy See.

The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and conquered by the governor Ponce de León in 1508. Pope Julius II, by a bull of 8 Aug. 1511, created the diocese under the name of Portorico; it also had jurisdiction over the islands of Culebra and Vieques. Pope Pius XI, by the apostolic constitution Ad sacrosancti Apostolatus, of 21 Nov. 1924, dismembered from the diocese of Portorico a group of parishes, creating the diocese of Ponce, and at the same time removed the Virgin Islands from the jurisdiction of the diocese of Roseau and united them to the diocese of Portorico, whose name he changed to S. G. di P.

The first capital of the island and of the diocese was Caparra, where the first bishop resided, Alonso Manso, a canon of Salamanca; nevertheless, by 1521 he is already found at S. G., the new capital. The bishops of the first two centuries were almost all religious of the principal Mendicant Orders, but they ordinarily had a brief episcopate in Portorico, receiving honorary transfers in exchange.

The cathedral church, begun in the 16th century but completed only in 1640, is in the Tuscan style; its plan is sumptuous, with three very spacious naves and chapels decorated with much elegance, particularly those of Providence, of Jesus the Nazarene, of St. Bernard and of the Holy Martyrs.