SAINT JOHN OF PUERTO RICO (SAN JUAN DE PUERTO RICO), DIOCESE OF
City and diocese on the island of Puerto Rico, situated between the Antilles and the Atlantic Ocean.
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, 29 male religious communities and 35 female (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 Governor Ponce de León in 1508. Pope Julius II, by a bull of 8 August 1511, established the diocese under the name of Puerto Rico; it had jurisdiction also over the islands of Culebra and Vieques. Pope Pius XI, with the apostolic constitution *Ad sacrosancti Apostolatus officium* of 21 November 1924, dismembered a group of parishes from the diocese of Puerto Rico to create the diocese of Ponce, at the same time removing the Virgin Islands from the jurisdiction of the diocese of Roseau and uniting them to the diocese of Puerto Rico, whose name was changed to Saint John of Puerto Rico.
The first capital of the island and of the diocese was Caparra, where the first bishop, Alonso Manso, a canon of Salamanca, resided; however, by 1521 he was already in San Juan, the new capital. The bishops of the first two centuries were almost all religious of the principal mendicant orders, but they generally had short tenures in Puerto Rico, being transferred elsewhere as an honor.
The cathedral church, begun in the 16th century but completed only in 1640, is in the Tuscan style; its plan is grand, with three spacious naves and chapels decorated with great elegance, particularly those of Providence, of Jesus of Nazareth, of Saint Bernard, and of the Holy Martyrs.