SUCRE, ARCHDIOCESE of. — Capital city of the department of Chuquisaca and archdiocese in Bolivia (South America).
It has an area of 50,875 sq. km. and 40,000 inhabitants, of whom 36,400 are Catholics; it has 13 deaneries, 35 parishes served by 36 diocesan priests and 30 religious priests; it has 6 male and 9 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 410).
The diocese was established by Pope Julius III on 27 June 1551 and was initially called Charcas, as a suffragan of Lima; it was elevated to a metropolitan see by Pope Paul V on 20 July 1609; at that time its ecclesiastical province included territories beyond Bolivia, in which it gradually came to have the dioceses of La Paz, S. Cruz, and Cochabamba as suffragans; on 22 May 1919, by decree of the S. Congregation Concettoriale, the vast territory of the Chaco was detached from the archdiocese of Plata and erected as an apostolic vicariate (AAS, 11 [1919], pp. 234–35). Pope Pius XI, by the apostolic constitution Praedecesoribus nostris of 1 Nov. 1924, detached certain territories from the archdiocese to form the new dioceses of Oruro, Tarija, and Potosi, changing the name of the archdiocese itself to S. (AAS, 17 [1925], pp. 501–503). Its suffragans are the dioceses of Potosi, S. Croce de la Sierra, and Tarija. The same Pope, by an apostolic letter of 8 Apr. 1925, conferred upon the metropolitan church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception and containing the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the title of minor basilica and insignia upon the Chapter (ibid., pp. 229–30). The metropolitan Basilica was built in 1568, with a single nave; the side aisles and the bell tower were added in the nineteenth century. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is made of solid gold. Adjacent to the Cathedral is the archbishop’s residence. Notable churches are those of S. Philip, S. Augustine, S. Dominic, Our Lady of Mercy, S. Lazarus, and S. Michael.
On 27 March 1644, the University of Chuquisaca was founded under the title of Royal and Pontifical University of S. Francis Xavier, by a bull of Gregory XV dated 8 Aug. 1623 and the «Real Cédula» of Philip III dated 2 February 1622. Until its suppression in 1767, the University was entrusted to the Jesuits. In 1826 it was reorganized by the Marshal of Ayacucho.