VICTORIA NELL'ISOLA VANCOUVER, DIOCESI di. - City and diocese in the Canadian province of British Columbia (Canada).
It has an area of 14,000 sq. km. and a population of 200,000 inhabitants, of whom 16,000 are Catholics, distributed among 24 parishes, served by 25 diocesan and 20 regular priests; it has a seminary, 5 male and 16 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 447).
The diocese of V. comprises Vancouver Island and the adjacent islands of the Canadian 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 was 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 remains of the Franciscan apostolate on Vancouver Island, which Pius IX raised to a diocese on 14 July 1846; the first bishop was Msgr. M. Demers, who took possession of his see at Victoria on 5 Sept. 1852, when it had no church and a clergy of three priests and one subdeacon. On 19 June 1903 Pope Leo XIII raised V. archdiocese, but on 19 Sept. 1908 the see lost its archiepiscopal dignity in favor of Vancouver.