The city of the same name, residence of the archbishop, is situated on an island to the north of Tierra Bomba (Colombia). Heredia built and fortified it in 1533, and Philip II, King of Spain, in 1579, granted it the title of city; it is now the capital of the State of Bolivar. Pope Clement VII erected it into a bishopric in 1534, and Leo XIII raised it to metropolitan rank in 1900.
Its first bishop was the Dominican Tomás del Toro (1535). Other bishops were: Fra Antonio de Hervia (1590), who was the first professor at the University of Lima; Fra Juan de Labrada (1596), who rebuilt the cathedral; the Franciscan, José Diaz de Lamadrid (1677), who built many churches and hospitals, and who gave to the cathedral a pulpit of marble, mosaics, and a monstrance valued at ninety thousand dollars. Pedro Adán Brioschi was the first archbishop. The diocese contains 300,000 inhabitants; it has 98 parishes, two religious orders of men and two of women; it has also a university and a college directed by the Jesuits, a seminary, and various houses of education for girls, directed by nuns.
VARIGNY in La grand encyclopédie, IX, 612; Ann. Pont. Cath. (Paris, 1907).