SAN GIOVANNI DI PORTORICO (SAN JUAN DE PUERTO RICO), DIOCESI of. — City and diocese on the island of Portorico, between the Antilles and the Atlantic.
It has an area of 3,430 sq. km. and a population of 1,200,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,130,000 are Catholics, distributed among 65 parishes served by 41 diocesan priests and 132 religious priests; it has one seminary, 20 male and 35 female religious communities (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 August 1511, created the diocese under the name of Portorico; it also had jurisdiction over the islands of Culebra and Vicques. Pope Pius XI, by the apostolic constitution Ad sacrosanti Apostolatus of 21 November 1924, detached a group of parishes from the diocese of Portorico, creating the diocese of Ponce; at the same time, he 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, Alonso Manso, a canon of Salamanca, resided; nevertheless, by 1521 he is already found at S. G., the new capital. The bishops of the first two centuries were almost all religious from the principal Mendicant Orders, but they ordinarily had brief episcopates in Portorico, receiving in exchange honorary transfers.
The cathedral church, begun in the sixteenth century but completed only in 1640, is in the Tuscan style; its plan is sumptuous, with three very spacious naves and chapels decorated with great elegance, particularly those of Providence, Jesus Nazarenus, S. Bernardo, and the Holy Martyrs.