VALPARAISO, DIOCESE of. – City and diocese in the Republic of Chile.
It has an area of 4,600 sq. km. and 490,000 inhabitants, of whom 480,000 are Catholics, distributed among 37 parishes served by 75 diocesan priests and 168 religious; it has one seminary, 37 male and 62 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 442). It is suffragan to Santiago del Cile.
The diocese was erected by Pius XI with the apostolic constitution Apostolici muneris of 18 October 1925. It comprises the civil provinces of V. and the Fernandez Islands (Mas a Tierra and Mas a Fuera). The cathedral is the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
BIBL.: AAS, 18 (1926), p. 202.