Roermond, Diocese of

ROERMOND, DIOCESE of - Suffragan of Utrecht; it coincides with the civil province of Dutch Limburg with an area of 2,205 sq km and 684,105 inhabitants, of whom 646,717 are Catholics, that is 94.5% (1947 census); these are distributed in 300 parishes with 808 secular priests and 94 regulars. The most populous part is the southern one, where the coal mines are located. Around the beginning of our century this center was changing from a rural region into an industrial one. A timely and intensive social activity meant that the change could take place without losses for Catholicism. The one who took the initiative until his death was Msgr. Henry Poels, who died on Sept. 7, 1948. Today the miners for the most part belong to the Catholic union.

Almost all of this territory was part of the diocese of Liège, a suffragan of Cologne until 1559; in that year Paul IV with the bull Super universes gave a new organization to the Netherlands and founded the diocese of R. as a suffragan of Malines. On Aug. 7, 1561 Pius IV appointed the first bishop and provided for the endowment and the territorial circumscription of the diocese. This was politically not very homogeneous and did not have the same geographical appearance as the present one, because it was composed of various territories, separated from one another by zones of the diocese of Liège, a situation that made communications very difficult, and Maastricht remained outside the new diocese. The first bishop was the dean of The Hague, Willem Lindanus, who took possession of his see only in 1569 because of the resistance of those bishops who had to cede parts of their territory and of abbots, whose abbeys were incorporated as endowment, and also of the population itself, which considered the new bishop, proposed by the king of Spain, Philip II, a representative of royal power, fearing the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition. His two successors were also excellent bishops: Cuyckius and Castro. After them, during the 17th and 18th centuries, following political unrest and also because of the poverty of the diocese, the see was vacant several times. However, while in the northern dioceses the Protestant "reformation" prevailed, in R. the hierarchy could continue and the population remained Catholic. The Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 suppressed the diocese and incorporated it for the most part into the diocese of Liège. After the separation of Holland from Belgium, Limburg became a Dutch province in 1839. King William I insisted that the zones of Limburg, still under the jurisdiction of Belgian bishops, be removed from it. Thus on June 2, 1840 Gregory XVI erected the vicariate of R. and in 1853, when the entire Dutch hierarchy was restored, it became a diocese with its present area. The first vicar and then bishop was John Paredia, dean of R., who as early as 1841 had opened a major seminary in the ancient charterhouse of R. (famous for its 12 martyrs of 1572 and for the residence of Denis the Carthusian, called the "doctor extaticus") and in 1843 the minor one at Rolduc, a medieval abbey of Canons Regular, founded in 1104 by Albert, with a beautiful Romanesque church of the 12th century. The cathedral Chapter was erected in 1850.

The oldest centers of Christianity in this territory are: Maastricht (v.); Susteren (formerly Suestra) where

St. Willibrord, the missionary of the Frisians, founded a monastery under Pepin of Heristal; St-Odilienberg, near R., where the English missionaries Wiro, Otger and Plechelm founded a church in honor of St. Peter at the beginning of the 8th century.

The city of R. itself, besides its Gothic cathedral, destroyed during the last war but now restored, has a magnificent monastic church in Romanesque style of the 11th-12th century.

MARTYRS OF RUREMUNDA

A group of religious and secular priests massacred there by the Calvinists in 1572.

In the bitter revolt of the Netherlands, the Calvinist troops of William the Silent, having seized the city of R. by a coup de main on 24 July 1572, vented their fury on the local clergy, putting to death amid atrocious torments the priests Erasmus of Utrecht, Vincent of Herch, Matthias of Cologne, John of Liège, William Wellen, John Leewis, the deacons Henry Wellen, John Gresserich, and the lay brothers of the Carthusian order Stephen Albert Winsemius and John Sittard.

The question of the Orange's complicity in the carnage remains unresolved; he did not, however, intervene to save the tortured men, nor did he take any measures against the assassins.

Piero Sannazzaro