Angola and Congo

Also known as SANTA CRUD DE REINO DE ANGOLA, and as SAO PAOLO DE LOANDA, diocese of Portuguese West Africa, suffragan of Lisbon. Its territory was discovered by the Portuguese in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and after 1514 was subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Grand Prior of the Order of Christ at Funchal in the Madeira Islands. In 1596 it was made an episcopal see by Clement VIII. The natives (Bantus, Bundas, Bushmen, etc.) number, it is said, 2,000,000. There are 1,000,000 Catholics for whom, according to Father Werner’s figures, there are 82 parishes, 8 churches, 10 chapels, and 36 priests. For these figures he quotes the diocesan reports to the Propaganda, in “Missiones Catholicae”, for 1888. The bishop resides at Loanda, a great seaport (14,000), with a railway that reaches inland some 200 miles to Ambaca, through a territory covered with rich plantations.