Santiago de Cuba (Saint Jacobus), Diocese of

SANTIAGO DE CUBA (Saint Jacobus), Diocese of. - In the easternmost part of the island of that name in the Antilles, at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico.

It has an area of 37,000 sq km with a population of 1,500,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,475,000 are Catholics, distributed in 30 parishes served by 37 diocesan priests and 51 regulars; it has a seminary, 13 male religious communities and 23 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 366). The diocese was created by Pope Adrian VI on 28 April 1522 and was elevated to a metropolitan see by Pope Pius VII on 24 November 1803. Its suffragans are the dioceses of Camagüey and Cienfuegos.

The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage, on 27 October 1492. Occupied by governor Ocampo in 1508, it was organized three years later politically and religiously; the first bishop was the Franciscan Giovanni de Ubita, who was succeeded in 1537 by M. Rodriguez de Salamanca. It was the only diocese until 1787, when the westernmost part of the island, that is Havana, was detached from it. The Cathedral, one of the oldest temples on the island, does not offer the proportions and beauties that would correspond to its importance; the style is the usual one of Spanish colonial architecture with the two quadrilateral towers.

It has had a series of illustrious bishops, among whom, from 1831, the Franciscan C. Alameda y Brea, later a cardinal, and his successor in 1850, St. Anthony M. Claret, founder of the Claretians, recently canonized.