The Diocese of Linares (also known as the Diocese of San Ambrosio de Linares; Latin: Dioecesis Linarensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Linares, Chile. It was established by Pope Pius XI on October 18, 1925 in his papal bullNotabiliter Aucto.
Parish church of the village of Nirivilo, San Javiercomuna, Linares Province, Chile. The building dates from Chile's colonial period. The parish belongs to the Diocese of Linares.
Catholicevangelization in Chile began in the middle of the 16th century, shortly after the arrival of the Spaniards. Pedro de Valdivia granted Juan Jofré de Loaiza the encomienda of Peteroa, north of the Maule river on November 1, 1552, and shortly after, on 1554, Doctrina de Peteroa[1] was created under the care of priest Juan de Océs, son of Don Rodrigo de Océs, with orders to cross to "other towns" of remaining Indians to the north and south of the Maule river. As a result of the successful campaigns in southern Chile, the Diocese of Imperial was created on March 22, 1563. Following the Arauco War Bishop Don Reginaldo de Lizárraga went to the King Felipe III to obtain from the Pope the annexation of his Bishopric to the one of Santiago, to which the Supreme Pontiff acceded provisionally. This situation persisted from 1609 until 1623.
On February 18, 1585, the third Bishop of Santiago in his detailed report to King Felipe II mentions the missions of "Longomilla and Purapel", "Chanco and Loanco" taken care of by the presbítero Francisco de Maestanza, with a salary of three hundred and eighty pesos in gold and food.
The Doctrinas of Cauquenes and Putagán
When the dioceses of Santiago and La Imperial were erected (in 1561 and 1564, respectively), the Maule river was considered the dividing line between the two dioceses. However, it seems that the division was not sufficiently clear because the Bishop of Santiago, FrayDiego de Medellín (1576–1592), created two docrinas south of the Maule river that remained under the jurisdiction of the Santiago bishops for more than one hundred and seventy years. The doctrinas at issue were Cauquenes and Putagán. Cauquenes was erected in an area inhabited by the "cauquenes" Indians, who gave name to the region and the doctrina that was based there. In 1739 the Doctrinero Don José de Rozas and Amaza, who resided in Chanco, built a chapel in the seat of Cauquenes, the same place where Don José Antonio Manso de Velasco later founded the Villa de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes de José de Manso de Tutuvén (Town of Our Lady of the Mercedes de José de Manso of Tutuvén, now Cauquenes) on May 9, 1742.
Cathedral of "San Ambrosio", Linares
The Cathedral of San Ambrosio de Linares
The Cathedral Church of San Ambrosio, of Linares Diocese, is considered to be one of the most important and finest religious buildings erected in Chile in the twentieth century. It replaced the original cathedral, after the latter was destroyed by an earthquake, in 1928. The new cathedral was conceived by bishop Juan Subercaseaux Errázuriz and its works were conducted by the renowned Chilean architects Carlos Bresciani and Jorge del Campo, the same duo that would be responsible, several years later, for the construction of another remarkable religious building, that of the parish church of Sagrado Corazón (Sacred Heart) in Providencia, Santiago de Chile.
Mgr. Subercaseaux gave a great initial impulse to the construction of the Linares Cathedral, which has been characterized as "the plastic expression of his refined artistic culture". Mgr. Subercaseaux, a dynamic and enterprising man, was not deterred by the shortage of resources available for the great work that had to be done. In his travels abroad, he was untiring to ask for greater resources for his diocese, which badly required some material aid that would help to finance the cathedral works and additional priests. In several countries (Italy, Germany, the United States, France, the Netherlands) Mgr. Subercaseaux appealed to the local Catholics in their own languages, urging them to contribute to the progress of his far-away diocese.
The cathedral was built according to the model of the famous Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio of Milan, built in Romanesque style and begun in the 4th century. The cathedral apse is remarkable for the outstanding mosaic work made by the Italian-born artist Giulio Di Girolamo. This mosaic work is one of the most important of its sort in South America. On the 18 October 2006 the remains of Giulio Di Girolamo's wife, Elvira, brought from Italy, were buried in the Cathedral together with those of her husband, who had died in 1998 and had been buried in the Cathedral years before.
Diocesan statistics
The Diocese of Linares has an area of 15,111 km2 and a population close to 350,000. More than 70% of its inhabitants consider themselves Catholic (2002 Census).
Francisco Lavín, Juvenal Pereira, René González, Erasmo Salazar, Plácido Grove, Hernán González, Rolf Schnitzler, Gabriel Lacaux, Jaime Vallet, Ramón Iturra, Luis Alarcón, Germán Cáceres, Silvio Jara, Lorenzo Solari, José Ulloa, Luis Retamal, Benjamín Retamales, Francisco Hormazábal, José Prado, Gonzálo Aravena, Luis Fuentealba, Raúl Moris, Alejandro Quiroz, Waldo Alfaro, Mario Agurto.
^The site where the evangelical proclamation took place was called a doctrina and the person in charge of a doctrina was a doctrinero. In general, the terms missionary and doctrinero had the same meaning
