Diocese of Ciudad Juárez

Diocese of Ciudad Juárez Dioecesis Civitatis Iuarezensis Diócesis de Ciudad Juárez
Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
Location
Country	Mexico
Ecclesiastical province	Province of Chihuahua
Metropolitan	Ciudad Juárez
Statistics
Area	11,448 sq mi (29,650 km2)
Population - Total - Catholics	(as of 2006) 2,564,000 2,179,000 (85%)
Parishes	68
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	10 April 1957 (60 years ago)
Cathedral	Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Bishop	Renato Ascencio León
Metropolitan Archbishop	Constancio Miranda Weckmann
Map

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Ciudad Juárez (Latin: Dioecesis Civitatis Iuarezensis) is located in the northern Mexican city of the same name, across the Río Grande from El Paso, Texas. It is part of the ecclesiastical province of Chihuahua and is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Chihuahua [1].

The Diocese of Ciudad Juárez was erected by Pope Pius XII[2] on 10 April 1957 from the Diocese of Chihuahua because of the population growth in the northern part of the state of Chihuahua. Pope Pius named Manuel Talamás Camandari [3] as the first bishop, and by 1966 he was overseeing a diocese of 565,000 faithful. When Bishop Talamás retired in 1992, the diocese consisted of more than one million Catholics.

Juan Sandoval Íñiguez[4] was selected by Pope John Paul II to succeed Talamás as second bishop on 11 July 1992, but remained for less than two years before being transferred to Guadalajara to replace the assassinated archbishop, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo on 21 April 1994. His successor was Renato Ascencio León [5], who had been subsequently the bishop of the neighboring Diocese of Cuauhtémoc-Madera, Chihuahua. Bishop Ascencio was installed on 7 October 1994, and administers a diocese with a Catholic population(2006) of 2,179,000.