VICTORIA, DIOCESE OF, ON VANCOUVER ISLAND. - City and diocese in the province of British Columbia, Canada.

It has an area of 14,000 sq km with a population of 200,000 inhabitants, of whom 16,000 are Catholics, distributed in 24 parishes, served by 25 diocesan priests and 20 regulars; it has a seminary, 5 male religious communities and 16 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 447).

The diocese of V. comprises Vancouver Island and the adjacent islands of the province of British Columbia. The first priests to appear in the territory were the Spanish Franciscans who settled at Nootka. In 1793 Fr. Magin Catala is found there; Fr. Gomez, who succeeded him, remained there until the English conquest, on 25 March 1795. On 14 March 1843, the Canadian priest G. B. Bolduc discovered the traces of the Franciscan apostolate on Vancouver Island, which Pius IX elevated to a diocese on 14 July 1846; the first bishop was Msgr. M. Demers, who entered his see, at Victoria, on 5 September 1852, at that time lacking a church and with a clergy of three priests and one subdeacon. Pope Leo XIII on 19 June 1903 elevated V. to an archdiocese, but on 19 September 1908 the see lost its archiepiscopal dignity in favor of Vancouver.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: AAS, 1 (1909), p. 198; A.-G. Morice, Hist. de l'Egl, cath. dans l'Ouest canadien, III, Montréal 1912, see index; L. Le Jeune, s. v. in Dict. général du Canada, II, Ottawa 1931; Le Canada ecclés., Montréal 1951, pp. 621-24.

Germano Lesage

@incollection{ec12_victoria_nell_isola_vancouver, author = {Lesage, Germano}, title = {Victoria Nell'Isola Vancouver, diocesi di}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1388}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/victoria-nell-isola-vancouver-diocesi-di} }

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Victoria, Diocese of, on Vancouver Island

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