TOUNGOO, VICARIATO APOSTOLICO di. — Situated in south-eastern Burma, west of the Salween River, it comprises the State of the Karens, the southern federated Shan States west of the Salween, the part of the civil district of Yamethin south of the 20th parallel, and the part of the district of T. north of the 18° 45′ latitude.
The population consists of Burmese, of Buddhist religion, and Karens, peaceful farmers inhabiting the mountains, who are divided into various tribes, among which the best known are the Red Karens and the Gebbù east of the Sittang. There are also minorities of immigrant Indians, and Chinese are not lacking. The Karens are animists and were the first to whom the missionaries of the Pont. Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan turned when they arrived in T. in 1868; the vicariate was entrusted to them. The apostolic vicariate of Southern Burma, detached from the apostolic vicariate of Ava and Pegu and erected on 27 November 1866, and definitively on 19 July 1870, changed its name to that of T. on 27 April 1927, when the prefecture—now a vicariate—of Keng-Tung was separated from II. The apostolate continues to be carried out chiefly among the Karens, since the Burmese Buddhists are rather resistant to Christianity.
It covers an area of 79,000 sq. km. and has a population of approximately 1,273,000 inhabitants, of whom 37,000 are Catholics, with more than 3,000 catechumens; 23,000 are Protestants, 8,000 Muslims, 12,000 Hindus, 300,000 animists, and 890,000 Buddhists. There are 42 priests (18 of them indigenous), 4 brothers, 92 sisters, half foreign and half native, 319 catechists, and 11 women catechists. Ecclesiastically, the mission is divided into 3 principal stations and 332 secondary stations, with about twenty churches and 315 chapels. There is a minor seminary. The primary schools number 54, the secondary and teacher-training schools 20, the orphanages 34, the leprosaries 1, and the hospitals 6. There are also 17 dispensaries. A printing press publishes religious and school books in the various Karen languages, as well as a Catholic periodical.