URUGUAIANA, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
It has an area of 89,953 sq. km., with a population of 668,747 inhabitants, of whom 650,000 are Catholic. It comprises 34 parishes, with a minor seminary, 39 diocesan priests and 42 religious priests, 15 male religious communities and 47 female ones. The diocese was erected by Bl. Pius X with the bull *Praedecessorum nostrorum* of 15 Aug. 1910, and its first bishop was Msgr. Ermete Giuseppe Pinheiro, who died in 1941. The diocese is a suffragan of Porto Alegre. The titular saint of the diocese is St. Michael the Archangel, and that of the cathedral is St. Anne.
BIBL.: Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 439; O Brasil Católico 1947, Juiz de Fora 1947, p. 448 ff. Virginio Bettezzati