Archdiocese of Lahore – Wikipedia

Posted on by
before-content-x4

L’ Archdiocese of Lahore (in latino: Archdiocesis Lohora ) is a metropolitan headquarters of the Catholic Church in Pakistan. In 2021 it had 581,000 baptized out of 32,294,485 inhabitants. It is lined up by Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw, O.F.M.

after-content-x4

The Archdiocese includes the civil districts of Kasur, Sheikhupura, Nankana-Sahib, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Narowal and Hafizabad in the Punjab province in Pakistan.

Archbishop’s seat is the city of Lahore, where the cathedral of the Sacred Heart is located.

The territory extends over 23,069 km² and is divided into 30 parishes.

Ecclesiastical province [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The ecclesiastical province of Lahore, established in 1994, includes the following suffragans

The Punjab region, in the far north of Hindustan, had been touched only marginally by Catholic missionaries. The first to reach these lands were the Jesuits, at the end of the 16th century, coming from Goa; Their work, thanks also to the benevolence of the Moghul emperors, had an initial success, but soon the evangelization of these lands was interrupted and in the first half of the eighteenth century there was no longer anything about the work of the Jesuits.

It was only after the British conquest (1840-1849) that the Catholic missionaries could return to the Punjab, which ecclesiastically depended on the apostolic vicars of Agra. Catholic churches arose almost everywhere (Lahore 1846, Jullundur 1847, Sialkot 1853, Multan 1859, Amritsar 1863), convents of religious were founded, and open schools, retired and orphanages straight from religious congregations, especially cappuccini from different provinces of the Order. The mission almost exclusively concerned the whites, in particular the Catholic soldiers of the British army stationed in the Punjab, or Catholic members of the colonial administration.

However, the situation was precarious, both because there was no real evangelization of the natives, and because the number of missionaries was always limited and conditioned by the availability of European priests or religious to go to India.

after-content-x4

On September 31, 1880 the Holy See decided the erection of the apostolic vicariate of the Punjab under the brief Intenders of Pope Leo XIII, obtaining the territory from the apostolic vicariate of Agra (today Archdiocese). [first] The first apostolic vicar was Paolo Tosi, an Italian cappuccino of the Emilia-Romagna province, former bishop of Allahabad. [2]

On 1 September 1886 as a result of the bubble Human health of Pope Leo XIII the apostolic vicariate was elevated to the rank of diocese. On June 7 of the following year, with the short After the onset , the new diocese, called “Diocese of Lahore”, joined the ecclesiastical province of Agra. The new diocese was immediately divided in two on 6 July 1887 with the separation of the Kashmir which was erected in the apostolic prefecture with the name of Kafistan and Kashmir (today the diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi).

The first bishop of the diocese of Lahore was Charles-Jacques Mouard, Cappuccino, former apostolic vicar of the Sychelles. The ecclesiastical organization of Punjab favored the beginning of a mission and the apostolate towards the Indians.

With the decree With a lahora of November 15, 1888 The Propaganda Congregation Fide officially entrusted the mission to the Belgian province in the diocese of Lahore, with the task of working mainly on the “conversion of the infidels”. [3] In 1889 two groups of Belgian Capuchins arrived in Lahore, for a total of 19 religious; On March 21, the Bishop also entered the diocese.

The beginnings of the mission in the diocese were not easy. Bishop Mouard died prematurely in 1890. His successor, Emmanuel Alfonso Van Den Bosch, did not have time to get to Lahore, since a year and a half after his appointment was transferred to the Archbishop’s office of Agra. Goffredo Pelckmans (1893-1904) was the real organizer and the initiator of the mission in Punjab. He owes the construction of the Vescovile Palace, completed in 1899, and of the Cathedral, consecrated in 1907. During his episcopate numerous Catholic schools and other religious congregations arose in his diocese to give the work of evangelization strongly.

One of the main and original missionary works established in the diocese of Lahore were the “agricultural colonies”, on the model of South America’s Jesuit reductions. These Christian villages grouped mostly out-of-caste, the people excluded from the Indian society, the untouchables, around an agricultural project established by the missionaries. The first foundation was that of Mariabad erected in 1892 on a land of almost 300 hectares owned by the Capuchins. Those of Khuspur followed in 1900, Francisabad in 1904, Antoniabad in 1914 and Rahmpur in 1918. Antoniabad included a huge land of over 2,500 hectares in which 6 Christian villages coexisted.

The success of the mission decided the Holy See to establish new ecclesiastical circumscriptions. On September 13, 1910 the eastern part of the diocese was sold for the advantage of the erection of the archdiocese of Simla (today Archdiocese of Delhi), of which Lahore became suffrage on 22 May 1913. On 17 December 1936 the south-western part of his own ceded territory for the benefit of the erection of the Apostolic Prefecture of Multan, who became a diocese in 1939.

Before the 1936 division, the Catholic community of the diocese included over 53,000 baptized and over 23,000 catechumens, distributed in more than 2,000 villages, grouped in 22 missionary stations or parishes. [4]

After the partition of India and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947-1948, the diocese was divided into two from the state border between India and Pakistan, which divided Punjab into two. Lahore, a bishop’s seat and the historical capital of Punjab, was now in Pakistan.

On July 15, 1950, the boundaries of the diocese were made to coincide with those of the Pakistani state, with the exception of the territories of the Jammu, who remained under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Lahore, given that the political question was not yet defined. At the same time, he became part of the new ecclesiastical province of Karachi. [5]

On January 17, 1952, with two distinct bubbles, the diocese of Lahore ceded the Indian part of its territory for the benefit of the erection of the apostolic prefectures of Kashmir and Jammu (today a diocese of Jammu-Sangar) and Jullundur (today diocese).

On April 23, 1994 the diocese was elevated to the rank of metropolitan archdiocese with the bubble Inter -daily of Pope John Paul II.

The periods of vacancies not exceeding 2 years or not historically ascertained are omitted.

  • Paolo Tosi, O.F.M.CAP. † (September 27, 1880 – 1886 discharged)
  • Charles-Jacques Mouard, O.F.M.CAP. † (10 August 1888 – 14 July 1890 deceased)
  • Emmanuel Alfonso Van Den Bosch, O.F.M.CAP. † (21 November 1890 – 2 May 1892 appointed Archbishop of Agra)
  • Goffredo Pelckmans, O.F.M.CAP. † (2 June 1893 – 3 August 1904 deceased)
  • Fabien-Antoine Eestermans, O.F.M.CAP. † (11 April 1905 – 17 December 1925 discharged [6] )
  • Hector Catry, O.F.M.CAP. † (March 28, 1928 – 4 July 1946 discharged [7] )
  • Marcel Roger Buyse, O.F.M.CAP. † (June 12, 1947 – 12 March 1967 discharged [8] )
  • Felicissimus Alphonse Raeasta, o.f.m.cap. † (12 March 1967 Successionuto – 10 July 1975)
  • Armando Trindade † (10 July 1975 – 31 July 2000 deceased)
  • Lawrence John Saldanha (April 24, 2001 – April 7, 2011 retired)
  • Sebastian Francis Shaw, O.F.M., Dal 14 Novembre

The Archdiocese in 2021 on a population of 32,294,485 people counted 581,000 baptized, corresponding to 1.8% of the total.

year population Presbyteri deacons religious parishes
baptized total % number secular regular baptized for presbyter men women
1950 78.429 15,000,000 0.5 42 2 40 1.867 5 102
1970 156.240 6.448.575 2.4 50 8 42 3.124 58 168
1980 166,000 10,371,000 1.6 57 13 44 2.912 59 168 21
1990 425.603 20,250,000 2.1 53 20 33 8.030 76 202 25
1999 505.883 22,000,000 2.3 sixty one 30 thirty first 8.293 90 214 25
2000 511.226 23,000,000 2.2 sixty one 30 thirty first 8.380 90 214 25
2001 514.226 23,500,000 2.2 72 29 43 7.142 102 223 25
2002 550,000 23,030,000 2.4 69 32 37 7.971 first 52 203 26
2003 560.463 24,000,000 2.3 47 32 15 11.924 first 29 197 25
2004 570,000 25,000,000 2.3 72 30 42 7.916 58 215 24
two thousand and thirteen 412,000 27,582,000 1.5 70 thirty first 39 5.885 69 561 27
2016 389,000 29,328,000 1.3 seventy three thirty first 42 5.328 141 558 27
2019 581.100 31.101.400 1.9 99 42 57 5.869 130 490 29
2021 581,000 32.294.485 1.8 eighty six 36 50 6.755 96 453 30
  1. ^ Date and incipit of the short apostolic are mentioned by the bubble Human health of 1 September 1886, in the original version in Latin.
  2. ^ Mc Messenger Cappuccino , Special missions, 5 The mission of the Eastern Indies, May 2010, pp. 3-4.
  3. ^ Sweeper Order of Minor Capuchin , vol. V, 1889, p. 6.
  4. ^ Dati riportati da: Emmerich d’Izegem, The mission of Punjab (diocese of Lahore – Indies English) Collectanea Franciscan, pp. 532.
  5. ^ AAS 43 (1951), p. 66 e seguenti.
  6. ^ Appointed owner of Letopoli.
  7. ^ Appointed bishop of Semen.
  8. ^ Appointed bishop of the Bizacena Giuca.

after-content-x4