San José de Costa Rica, Diocese of

SAN JOSÉ DE COSTA RICA, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese, capital of Costa Rica in Central America.

It has an area of 13,000 sq km with a population of 436,468 inhabitants, of whom 435,000 are Catholics distributed in 47 parishes, served by 75 diocesan priests and 56 regulars; it has a seminary, 11 male religious communities and 19 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 356). It was first under the jurisdiction of Guatemala.

The diocese was created by Pope Pius IX on 28 February 1850; Pope Benedict XV elevated it to a metropolitan see on 16 February 1921, with the diocese of Alajuela as suffragan.

This region was discovered by Christopher Columbus on 5 October 1502; the Catholic religion was established there in 1514 with the occupation by the Spaniards, who fully organized it in 1574 under the name of New Carthage. At that time, however (from 1531), the diocese of Nicaragua had jurisdiction over Costa Rica, and the two regions were under the metropolitan see of Seville until 1546; from then on until 1743 they were under the ecclesiastical province of Lima, and finally under that of Guatemala. When Costa Rica was erected as an independent diocese in 1850, its boundaries were those of the Republic, proclaimed in 1842, but in 1921 the region of Alajuela was detached from it, and there is also the apostolic vicariate of Limón.