Diocese of Ruremonde
Ruremonde is a suffragan diocese of Utrecht; it coincides with the Dutch civil province of Limburg, covering an area of 2,205 sq. km. and having 684,105 inhabitants, of whom 646,717 are Catholics, i.e., 94.5% (1947 census). These are distributed in 300 parishes served by 808 secular priests and 94 regulars. The most densely populated area is the southern part, where the coal mines are located. Around the beginning of this century, this region changed from a rural to an industrial one. Prompt and intensive social activity ensured that this transformation could occur without losses for Catholicism. The initiative was taken, until his death, by Monsignor Enrico Poels, who died on 7 September 1948. Today, the miners largely adhere to the Catholic trade union.
Almost the entire territory once belonged to the diocese of Liège, a suffragan of Cologne, until 1559; in that year, Paul IV, with the bull *Super universas*, reorganized the Netherlands and founded the diocese of Ruremonde as a suffragan of Mechelen. On 7 August 1561, Pius IV appointed the first bishop and provided for the endowment and territorial boundaries of the diocese. This was politically and geographically heterogeneous compared to the present one, as it consisted of various territories separated by areas of the diocese of Liège, making communications difficult and leaving Maastricht outside the new diocese. The first bishop was the dean of Aya, Willem Lindanus, who took possession of his see only in 1569 due to resistance from bishops who had to cede parts of their territory and from abbots whose abbeys were incorporated as endowments, as well as from the population, which saw the new bishop, proposed by King Philip II of Spain, as a representative of royal power and feared the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition. His two successors, Cuyckius and Castro, were also excellent bishops. After them, during the 17th and 18th centuries, due to political unrest and the poverty of the diocese, the see was vacant several times. However, while in the northern dioceses the Protestant "Reformation" prevailed, in Ruremonde the hierarchy could continue, and the population remained Catholic. The Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 suppressed the diocese and incorporated most of it 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 Limburg areas still under the jurisdiction of Belgian bishops be removed from their authority. Thus, on 2 June 1840, Gregory XVI established the vicariate of Ruremonde, and in 1853, when the entire Dutch hierarchy was restored, it became a diocese with its current boundaries. The first vicar and later bishop was Joannes Paredis, dean of Ruremonde, who had already opened a major seminary in the ancient charterhouse of Ruremonde (famous for its twelve martyrs of 1572 and the residence of Denis the Carthusian, known as the "doctor exstaticus") in 1841, and a minor seminary in Rolduc in 1843, a medieval abbey of the Canons Regular founded in 1104 by Ailbertus, with a beautiful Romanesque church from the 12th century. The cathedral chapter was established in 1859.
The oldest Christian centers in this territory are Maastricht (v.); Susteren (formerly Suestra), where
he became archpriest of Sondrio, then under the rule of the Grisons. A distinguished theologian, he participated in various disputes with Protestants, the most famous of which were those of Tirano (1595; V. *Acta disputationis Trianensis*, Como 1597) and Piuro (1597). The zeal and firmness with which he carried out his apostolate earned him, along with the love of Catholics, the bitter hatred of Calvinists. Falsely accused in 1608 of being the instigator of an attempted assassination of a "preacher," he had to leave the city, returning six months later (January 1609), acquitted by the court of Chur. In 1617, he opposed the opening of a Calvinist college in Sondrio, which sparked violent Protestant agitation. R. was imprisoned (24 July) on mostly political pretexts and tried by the infamous *Straffgericht* of Thusis. He died after two days of torture. His cause of beatification is underway.