San Luis Potosí

(SANCTI LUDOVICI POTOSIENSIS)

Diocese in Mexico, erected by Pius IX in 1854. It includes the State of San Luis Potosí, and a small portion of the State of Zacatecas. Its cathedral is richly decorated. The Church of Mount Carmel is a fine specimen of the Baroque style of architecture. Before the revolution there adjoined it a splendid Carmelite convent, a spacious orchard, and lands that extended to the sea, a distance of 400 miles. At present, part of the convent has been rebuilt and given to the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, who preside over a well-attended school. The sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe is also a magnificent church. The first bishop was Don Pedro Barajas, who spent most of his episcopal life in exile. The second and third bishops had very brief episcopates The present (and fourth) bishop, Don Ignacio Montes de Oca y Obregón, rules in more peaceful times, and has been able to build a large seminary, where not only Mexican subjects, but also some students from the United States and Canada, receive a solid education, imparted by a choice staff of professors belonging to different orders and to the secular clergy. A school of arts and crafts has been founded under the Augustinian Fathers, also an orphan asylum and a Catholic hospital. The cathedral has its chapter canonically established; and there are 56 parishes with their churches and schools, and about three times as many chapels. The population of the diocese is (1910) 624,748, all Catholic, except perhaps some fifty foreigners. The capital, San Luis Potosí, has 82,946 inhabitants.