SANTA MARTA, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in northern Colombia, capital of the department of Magdalena (South America).
It has an area of 33,000 sq. km., with a population of 410,000 inhabitants, of whom 405,000 are Catholic; it comprises 36 parishes served by 55 diocesan priests and 25 regular clergy; it has a seminary, 7 male religious communities and 17 female (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 363). The diocese was erected in 1535 and its first bishop was Msgr. Juan Fernández de Angelo, who took possession of the diocese in 1536. Pope Paul IV suppressed it in 1562, but on 15 April 1577 it was re-established by Gregory XIII as a suffragan of Bogotá. The first bishop was Msgr. Juan Mendéz. In 1900 it was made a suffragan of Cartagena, comprising the department of Cartagena and the territories of the Sierra Nevada and Motilones. Among the monuments of the city are remembered
